Here I am, doing research for a movie I can’t care less about, because god knows what kind of torture fans of apocalypse movies will do to non-believers. Every now and then I appreciate an end-of-the-world flick, but Doomsday is just not my cup of tea. I’ll list a favourite so you know where I’m coming from: The Mist. I understand that Doomsday isn’t a film centering on the disaster itself, but rather its aftermath of survivors and damage control, but to a non-fanatic like me, they’re both sort of occupying the same spot on the Venn diagram. One thinks of I Am Legend, which despite its vampiric creatures, was still more convincing than Doomsday. A likely reason: Doomsday is kind of difficult to take seriously because the lobbing of heads and limbs is kind of a been-there-done-that. The blood looks fake, anyway!

A virus breakout in Scotland has resulted in an extreme quarantine of the infected, but when the same virus rears its ugly head in London, a group of futuristic SWAT-like team are deployed to the isolated wasteland to look for a cure. They’re convinced there’s one because of evidence of survivors in the quarantined area. What they don’t know is that the survivors are piss-mad, and naturally so because nobody likes to be isolated and left to die. The survivors are also apparently all goths of some sort, with hand-made Flintstones weapons, who mindlessly follow the lead of an alpha-male and his girlfriend. It’s a violent and cannibalistic race and negotiations are out of the question, so people are slaughtered left and right before you can say “bloody!”. Unimportant characters die, leaving Kate Beckin-I mean, Rhona Mitra and her supporting cast to shoulder the film’s ill excuse of a plot.

Wikipedia says this movie was made because director Neil Marshall couldn’t keep his wet dream of having medieval knights fighting high-tech soldiers to himself, and I guess that explains it.

More bloodshed, more senseless killings. You know Mitra’s character isn’t going to die (she like goddamn Lara Croft), so really, there’s no reason to watch this at all, especially when the action isn’t all that spectacular. These scenes are there to build up the climax, which I think is the one where Mitra fights some guy in an arena gladiator-style, bloodthirsty spectators and all. It doesn’t look as great as it sounds in writing. Maybe this isn’t the climax at all, I really can’t tell, it’s that disjointed. 

I’ll confess now: I don’t remember what happened after that. Doomsday is not fun at all, unless you enjoy mindless carnage, because there’s lots of it. Too much, I’d say.

(First published at InCinemas)