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UK, USA, South Africa, Germany 2008
Director: Neil Marshall
Cast: Rhona Mitra, Malcolm McDowell, Bob Hoskins, Nathan Wheatley, Alexander Siddig, Jeremy Crutchley
Rating: R
Release Date: 27 April 2008 (UK)
Running Time: 1 hour 53 minutes
The Movie Review
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| DOOMSDAY |
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Mixed-up! Yes, that's the word...mixed-up. With an awesome opening act that's like the horror version of Saving Private Ryan (1998) where people are butchered with machine guns, and evacuation that resembles a bit of Will Smith's I am Legend (2007), and also a party of bada$ses with their car that reminds me of Romero's Land of the Dead (2005). One might think, this would be one heck of seriously scary movie. Duh.., you're wrong. Doomsday is a mixed-up of those serious scenes and campy grotesque exploitation movie that we used to find back at the 80s.
Doomsday being released after I saw several horrible horror movies like One Missed Call (2008 remake), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Cloverfield (2008), is like a salvation in the theater. Although not as a revolutionary as Teeth (2007), but Doomsday stands its ground blatantly. It opens with a bang and goes on with an even more bigger bang!
This time Doomsday is starting off from Scotland. If last year, in the zombie film 28 Weeks Later (2007), moviegoers have watched the-end-of-the-world's aftermath that occurs in London, England, then this time we are in for a treat in Glasgow. The storyline begins in 2008 when a deadly virus called the reaper virus infected Scotland that turns the nation into definite chaos and leads to total quarantine of Scotland by England. In desperation and hunger, the remaining survivors try to eat rats and any found animals, and eventually they turn cannibals and eat themselves. After that, Scotland is completely black and silence, the total extinction of the people of Scotland.
However 30 years later, the same virus emerges in a ghetto in England, and the prime minister then sends a team to go to the now-extinct Scotland to find the cure. This action is based on the pictures evidence taken by the satellite proving several people are still living and walking in Scotland, which means those survivors have the cure. The team, consisting of scientist and the army as well, is lead by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), a Scottish woman who was saved by a military chopper when the sealing of Scotland began. The team never thinks of this as a simple mission, but what they are about to get is far beyond their worst imagination.
Different from what 28 Weeks later has presented us (with its seriously daunting tone), Doomsday besides giving us some blood-soaked gore scenes, it also never misses to put some bloody jokes in between. It evenly sprinkles blood and gory things throughout the introduction scenes. The fast pace of the movie also helps the tension building a lot. Sadly, once the tension has been solidly built, that tension is instantly flipped into one big "Heh?"-kinda notion, with a big amazement of how campy this movie turns out to be. However the campy side of Doomsday is taken care of seriously by the filmmakers, the costumes, the songs, and other bloody things. So it definitely does not imply that the actual story is bad, it's simply grotesque. Probably if you have watched Mad Max (1979) or Escape from New York (1981), you'll catch the drift of this horror flick clearly.
However either in the scary side or in the strange side, the gory and the action scenes are still intense, with all the pyrotechnics, shooting, car chasing, swashbuckling and the great agility of the stuntmen and women, Doomsday offers a real entertainment (with less beautiful women though), but pretty much only if the overall theme matches your taste.
Rhona Mitra's character, whose walk and talk reminds me so much of Kate Beckinsale's Selene in Underworld, is so vivid with energy. She doesn't overdo stuff, and that's what makes Mitra's character so cool. With solid supporting cast like Malcolm McDowell, among others, I would honestly say Doomsday brings good memory of the mindless bloody horror movie from the past decades. And seeing it in year 2008 actually made me kinda content with its contents.
© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com
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