Send us back to hell, we’ve had our fill of heaven

I’ve been running a bit dry on watching horror / apocalyptic end of the world styled films so when Doomsday came in I couldn’t help but be sure to put it at the top of the list of what I needed to see next. While not a zombie movie I was hoping this would temporarily get the job done and fill my want for the genre. This is the first film I’ve watched directed by Neil Marshall so I wasn’t fully sure what to expect, however I wasn’t disappointed (until about 3/4th of the way through but.. I’ll get to that.) The future is hell in Britain as the country has been ravaged by a plague that forced them to seal off half of the country behind walls to stop it from killing off the entire population. This has helped lead the country to be cut off from the rest of the world to avoid spreading the infection and society is slowly breaking down. Years have gone by and suddenly the plague is once more spreading throughout the nation. While there is no cure in sight apparently a select task force is assembled to enter the hot zone of the original outbreak of the virus and determine if a cure had been found as is a report of survivors beyond the wall.

The female lead played by Rhonda Mitra (who I’ve seen in a few movies though never with this type of a role) played a cop who is sent on a government mission to investigate of a cure to this virus was actually discovered by the apparent survivors. She did play the roll of a badass quite well and I hope to see her in more similar roles in the future. Sent in by her commander (Bob Hoskins.. who really needs to be in more movies in general.. and star as one of the characters in the upcoming Dune movie as Gurney Halleck if I had any say in the matter! Of course I don’t.. but a man can dream.) They battle through a band of cannibalistic ‘punks’ while investigating the lab of the lost scientist and rescue someone who claims that she can guide them to their goal. When they finally tracks down the scientist who was working on a cure (Poor Malcolm McDowell.. he’s only good for playing an insane villain these days!) all hell breaks loose. On a side note. The barely shown Prime Minister was played by “Doctor Bashir” of Deep Space 9. While I checked his IMDB I seriously don’t remember seeing him in any roll between the 2 (I haven’t finished Season 7 of 24 though so that would be why!)

While fight scenes occur between this special forces team and neo-cannibal biker punks and a civilization that has ‘formed’ based upon medieval principles (…what?!) I was still able to suspend most of my disbelief until a chase scene near the end of the movie. With what these ‘biker punks’ were driving compared to the Bentley our main hero just ‘happened’ to find… there is NO WAY they would have been able to keep up with her. I’m sorry she was in a Bentley… Really just… I had to suspend my disbelief for enough of the movie that I couldn’t ignore something that blatantly just did not make sense in ‘the real world.’ The ending… was just lame.

It’s a decent paced action movie and was fun to watch. If your looking for a sci-fi thriller that will give you something to think about, this is not it. If your looking for a movie with no plot holes, again not in. In the mood for a good weekend action flick though and you should enjoy this one. Just have to turn off your analyzing skills a bit while you watch it! (It was a fun movie just not if your going to over analyze it.)

Amazon