Doomsday (2008) 7/10

When Dog Soldiers came out, it was totally impressed by what Neil Marshall was able to do with a small budget and some great imagination. I was excited to see what he would do with his first bigger budget film, The Decent, and like most horror fans I was totally blown away. One of the scariest movies I've ever seen, and certainly the scariest I had seen in theatres. I was even more excited when his next film came out, Doomsday. But after the slew of bad reviews and poor box office performance, I opted to wait for the dvd. I wish I hadn't.

Doomsday is set in the near future when a virus breaks out in Scotland. The virus is akin to the plague and to stop it from spreading, a giant wall is built around Scotland. Fast forward 30 years and the plague has been found inside London. There are known survivors within Scotland so a crack team of special ops are sent to go inside, capture a survivor, and bring the specimen back so that an anti-virus can be made from their blood.

So the film has a bit of 28 Days Later, Aliens, Escape from New York, Gladiator (yeah knights on horses and epic castles), The Road Warrior, and The Road Warrior: Beyond Thunderdome. That doesn't leave much room for anything new or original. The film was nailed for the obvious homages and worship of cult films. Personally, I usually hate homage films. I don't like movies that crib ideas from better movies. Come up with your own shit, simple as that. With Doomsday though, its just too over the top and entertaining for me to hate it. The action is almost non-stop throughout and given the number of films it steals from, it really never gets boring. Once all the good ideas from beyond thunderdome get used up, its on to some sword and sandal knight fighting action. Once that gets old its on to the last chase scene in the road warrior, this time with a Bentley and so on. He took all the movies he loved, put em in a blender, made em gorier, made em faster paced and more extreme, slapped it all together, and called it Doomsday.

Let me make one thing clear, Doomsday is an awesome B-movie cheesefest of the highest degree. It is NOT an original film. Its nothing more then the cheesy b-movie ripoff fest it tries to be. The viewer must walk into Doomsday with the right expectations. This isn't high art. This isn't even believable. Its just over the top cheese at its most ridiculous.

Nudity-none

Gore - medium

Overall - 7/10