
You and Me and the End of the World
Hold up … if there are enormous herds of cattle milling about the glens, why are there cannibals? No, wait, I’ve gone and started things off too far into my thought process again … Let me begin at the beginning. Neil Marshall’s Doomsday was just on Cinemax again and once again, I am strangely compelled to give falling in love with it a shot. I can’t imagine that anyone who happens across this wouldn’t already know, but for those who came in late: Marshall’s follow up to 2005’s The Descent concerns something called the Reaper virus. It sweeps through Scotland, causing evil government bureaucrats to quarantine the country with an automated machine gun equipped take on Hadrian’s Wall, until thirty years later when there’s an outbreak of the virus in London and signs of life up in Glasgow suggest that there might be a cure. The aforementioned evil bureaucrats David O’Hara [The Departed] and Alexander Siddig [Kingdom of Heaven] recruit a team of wannabe hard-assess led by wannabe hard-ass extraordinaire Rhona Mitra to suss things out. By which I mean battle an army of punked-out, Fine Young Cannibals-loving … well … cannibals lead by mohawked Craig Conway and tattooed Lee-Anne Liebenberg then a band of early bits of Excalibur rejects holed up in Blackness Castle [no really that’s where that bit was shot] and led by a medical researcher turned mad scientist Lord of all he surveys Malcolm McDowell. If that sounds a bit like Marshall chucked The Road Warrior, Escape from New York, No Blade of Grass, The Omega Man and Metalstorm into a cinematic blender before hitting puree, you would not be wrong.
Fortunately, there are bad over-stuffed and mashed-up unofficial remakes and then there are over-stuffed and mashed-up unofficial remakes that are just bad and Doomsday is the clearly the former. In that respect, it’s closer to Stephen Saint Leger and James Mather’s Lockout than Scott Stewart’s Legion or Wes Craven’s Cursed. You see, though like Cursed it contains not a single original idea, it evidences a clearly crazed love for what it’s stealing that rip-off projects like Cursed or Legion simply lack. Now, if you’ve read a review of it before you might think that the problems with Doomsday hinge on its forthright derivativeness or on the fact that it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense [the out of the clear blue cannibalism was just the tip of the iceberg] But those aren’t really problems. I mean, who expects logic and reason from a film featuring a cannibal barbecue attended by the Baseball Furies [yes you read that correctly], set to a Siouxsie & the Banshees tune and featuring numerous gimps and a pair of post-apocalyptic go-go dancers? Honestly, Doomsday goes out of its way to remind viewers not to take it too “seriously” so that it isn’t “serious” is a feature not a bug.

What is the problem? Why do I want to love Doomsday but can’t seem to bring myself to more than like it? Well as it happens Planet Terror was on last night too and switching back and forth between the two I finally realized what was really wrong with Doomsday … It just isn’t cool. It wants to be, but it isn’t — that’s the difference and frankly it’s all Neil Marshall’s fault. He has real skills, just doesn’t have whatever it is that allows some directors — like say Robert Rodriguez– to take an actor who isn’t inherently cool and just make them cool via the psychic powers of his lens. Take his work with Six Feet Under’s Freddy Rodriguez or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants alum Alexis Bledel or Fantastic Four’s Jessica Alba for example. Whatever it is that allows Robert Rodriquez to get away with casting someone as bland a Devon Aoki just isn’t in Marshall’s bag of directorial tricks. So, in the kind of England’s in deep shit filmic emergency that calls for the likes of a Vinnie Jones, Doomsday gives us Adrian Lester. He’s a fine actor but when cannibal punk rocker asses need to be kicked to save London from an apocalyptic virus you leave him behind at his desk and get Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson to save the day. The lead is almost as out of place, in a situation drawn as calling for “Snake” Plissken’s illegitimate daughter (e.g. Michelle Rodriguez, Katee Sackhoff, Elodie Young) we get Rhona Mitra. Who is not a terrible actress but who just isn’t up to this. In short: Marshall’s and Doomsday’s hearts are totally in the right place, even if its stars aren’t and it couldn’t possibly bore you. What more can I say?
