Doomsday Review

I have a confession to make (hey thats the name of the blog!). For the first 20-30 minutes of this movie I was drfiting in and out of consciousness, or sleeping as some people call it. Then when I did wake up the resulting 'reality' was so unbelievably piss poor that I left the cinema to inhale nicotiny goodness, slowly, taking my time. This may sound like a failure in my mission then. I haven't technically watched all of every film shown by my beloved multiplex. Well fuck you, I don't care.

The inexplicable career of Radha Mitchell continues as she plays Snake Plissken a-like Eden Sinclair, a SWAT member that makes Colin Farrel look like a big gay softie. When Scotland is sealed off due to a head burstingly nasty plague Radha is sent in to find the cure. Along the way she meets gimps, punks and Malcolm McDowell in a world that puts the dysentry in distopia.

So we kick off with a plague of 'angry diseased half dead people' (but not rage infected zombies) that is not at all ripping of 28 days later. Then Scotland is annexed and becomes the kind of place that no-one can escape from except a person in an eye patch sent to work by a sinister government (completely different from Escape From New York). The heroine bandies a group of well trained military types together but their initial drive in an APC doesn't go to plan in a way that doesn't seem like a shot for shot remake of the exact same bloody scene from Aliens. And on and on and on it goes.

Mad Max, Lord of the Rings, The Warriors and even Robin Hood Prince of bloody Thieves are all given the 'look I can do a bit from a movie I like' treatment. I'm fine with a nod to other works now and again but the whole film feels like a British Date Movie or Meet the Spartans such is the blatant half inching of other peoples ideas. There is no worse criticism than that last sentence. After the average Dog Soldiers and the very good, and original, The Descent lets hope its a case of Neil Marshall thinking I'm gonna do a movie I want and screw everybody else, rather than a complete failing of any original ideas. Oh and those defending it as a comedy thats well funny, I'm not seeing the humour in a women tied up and beaten by a sneering pantomime villain. I'm also not seeing the humour in having to listen to Frankie Goes to Hollywood.