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Neil Marshall’s Doomsday is a horror for viewers, writes Ervell E. Menezes THE Day After perhaps was one of the earlier doomsday films but the 1980s and 1990s had them coming with studied regularity. Since then there has been a sort of gap but Neil Marshall’s Doomsday seems to revive that horror trend.
Few know what happens behind the wall, but it seems that the few survivors are living on the flesh of their fellow human beings. The situation is bizarre. But the city was forgotten till there is a fresh outbreak of the virus and scientists feel there must be an antidote available in the forgotten city. So they send in a team captained by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) out there in the abandoned city. What takes place is mostly in darkness and semi-darkness, which is meant to enhance the horror but thereaction aplenty. In fact too much and tends to jar. Cinematographer Sam McCurdy does a good job in the semi-darkness but can be appreciated more in daylight later on. There’s a touch of Mad Max and bikers make their presence felt. So do "knights in shining armour" and some weird sequences. But an updated can-can dance sequence is the brightest spot in this monotonous action-heavy movie. The action-sequences are loud, brash and brutal and though the fast and furious action is meant to numb the brain it really doesn’t succeed. Bob Hoskins looks much older than in his comic heydays and takes a bit cameo and David O Hara and Adrian Lester do their bit but all this pell-mell scarcely adds up to any meaningful entertainment. Form overshadows content and the end comes as a sort of relief. In fact one is tempted to say if we have films like this then may be doomsday won’t be so bad.
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Marshall
follows his claustrophobic The Descent with this 1980s-type
action adventure set in futuristic Glasgow after the dreaded Reaper
virus has hit Scotland. It may start in the present, (2008) but goes
further in time and Glasgow has been quarantined to curb the spread of
the deadly virus.