Twenty-five years after the Reaper plague wiped out a large chunk of the U.K.’s population, the believed-to-be-dormant virus responsible for the epidemic makes a return. The British government, which had taken a cue from Hadrian and constructed a massive wall to prevent the infected from re-entering the country, discovers a band of survivors in Scotland, a band that by all rights shouldn’t be there. A team of scientists and soldiers headed up by Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is dispatched to cross the border, find the missing scientist (Malcolm McDowell) who was working on a cure, secure the cure and bring it back.

CRITIQUE

As a director, Neil Marshall obviously has some talent. As a writer, though, Marshall is no great shakes. His previous movies, Dog Soldiers and The Descent, were effective horror-thrillers, with Marshall’s skill with a camera compensating for the derivative, often silly elements of his scripts. But his latest work, Doomsday, is a stupid, boneheaded patchwork of scenes, characters, and story elements borrowed from other movies. Not surprisingly, the end result pales in comparison to the movies from which it borrows, ending up a lazy, illogical waste.

Doomsday should be fun. Most of the movies which it alleges to pay homage to (that’s Marshall’s phrase, and I think it’s safe to say he’s speaking euphemistically) are fun, but Marshall somehow managed to drain away all of the fun while putting the material to his own use. The movie begins as 28 Days Later, turns into Escape From New York, segues into a mishmash of Gladiator and Excalibur, and climaxes as The Road Warrior.

Those are five movies I really enjoy and have gladly watched numerous times, so I think it’s a bit puzzling that Marshall could cobble from all of them and make a movie this bad. And while he’s claimed he intended Doomsday to be both a love letter to those movies as well as a way of hopefully introducing them to a new generation, I’d say he’s really done nothing more than rip them off.

Sinclair is nothing more than Snake Plissken with a sex change (Mitra is completely miscast in the role; the part required either a better actress or one who isn’t so attractive), and the car chase at the end (which makes a hell of a commercial for Bentley automobiles; the car Sinclair drives crashes through an exploding bus without receiving so much as a scratch) is lifted almost whole from The Road Warrior. As I said, I enjoyed his previous movies enough to overlook their derivative nature, but here Marshall’s borrowings are so blatant he makes them impossible to ignore.

Other aspects of the story are also painfully familiar. I doubt anyone will be surprised that certain members of the British government aren’t entirely truthful about why they want the cure. The band of crazed rebels Sinclair and her companions tangle with like their music loud and their parties wild; they also predictably favor leather clothes (which must explain why there’s not a cow in sight), spiky hair, and tattoos.

The plot also contains more holes than there are craters on the moon. Locomotives that have been out of service for more than two decades not only appear at opportune times, they’re also still fully functional. Despite the fact that no one has been allowed in or out of Scotland since the plague hit (in addition to the construction of the wall, the coastal waters were mined), gasoline is still in plentiful supply. Cell phones also magically work within the country (better still, they don’t even have to be activated).

McDowell and his followers have taken residence in a Scottish castle that had become a tourist attraction before the plague hit. There are several hundred of these survivors, and each has managed to cobble together an authentic period costume and weapon. I imagine a few such items could have been found in the castle, but how could they have possibly outfitted everyone?

I’m not ready to close the door on Marshall just yet, but one more disaster like this and I may have to reconsider my position. It would probably be in his best interest to either hire someone to put his ideas on paper or--better yet--find an existing screenplay and shoot it. If he’s not careful, his deficiencies as a filmmaker could very well end up completely overwhelming his strengths.

THE VIDEO

This is my first time viewing a Universal Blu-ray disc, and I’m happy to report that the 2.35:1/1080p transfer included here is stellar. The visuals tend to waver between cold, icy interiors and slightly overcooked exteriors (with a few scenes falling somewhere in between the two extremes), and all are handled extremely well.

Colors all across the spectrum are delineated perfectly, and blacks are deep and rich throughout. There’s a vivid sense of depth in the image, and the level of detail is consistently high, even in the wider shots (I was floored to discover that I could clearly make out each individual head in an overhead satellite image of the castle).

THE AUDIO

The English DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 track (the only audio option included on the disc) is as ridiculously pumped-up as the movie. This is the sonic equivalent of a beat-down, with near-constant surround action, continually throbbing bass, and enough whip pans to make you tear the tendons in your neck.

Unfortunately, dialogue intelligibility can be a problem at times. Some of the accents are a bit thick or even borderline indecipherable, which isn’t a flaw in the audio, but the fact that some of the dialogue is obscured by music or effects is; there are moments during some of the more active scenes in which bits of dialogue become overwhelmed, but thankfully there aren’t many of them.

English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The commentary with writer/director Neil Marshall and cast members Sean Pertwee, Darren Morfitt, Rick Warden, and Les Simpson is fairly interesting, but there’s an awful lot of dead air. Marshall touches on virtually all aspects of the production, while the other participants essentially chime in to agree with something the writer-director has said.

The following features fall under the heading of Universal’s U-Control option and are accessible while the feature is playing. The first two can be viewed on any Blu-ray player, while the PiP track requires a Profile 1.1-compliant player.    

Reaper Virus Files offer text-based info on story’s background, including pieces on the plague, the characters, the setting, etc.

The Tech Specs supplies a series of pop-up text boxes that provide information about the various weapons and vehicles featured in the movie.

A Picture-in-Picture track offers behind-the-scenes footage and mini-featurettes that look at various parts of the production. You’ll see raw footage from the shoot, interviews with the cast and crew, a look at the stuntwork, production design, and costuming, etc. Unfortunately, much of the footage is a bit unfocused, and what’s presented runs less than half the length of the movie.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Given just how heavily Doomsday relies on other people’s ideas, Marshall should have tossed in a Paris Hilton lookalike, titled it Horror Movie or Action Movie, and sold it as a comedy. Even with the lowered expectations I had going in, this one is still a major disappointment.