Twenty-five years after a plague resulted in Scotland being quarantined, a group of scientists and soldiers must fight marauders in the wastelands to find a cure and save the remainder of Great Britain.
I figured I’d hold off on this for a bit, in respect to Hey Internet, Stop Being Such Cynical Effing Douchebags Blog-a-Thon day.
Doomsday was fucking dire. In fact, it was the worst movie I’ve seen since Transformers, with which it shares so much. I never walk out of movies, but if I hadn’t gone with J., I would have left halfway through without looking back.
Considering the critical tongue bath it’s getting from genre fans, I can only imagine that it’s a matter of time before someone accuses me of hating Doomsday because it was derivative of previous post-apocalyptic movies. I hate writing an anticipatory defense, but that wasn’t the case. As a matter of fact, I’m an admirer of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre, derivative movies, and especially derivative post-apocalyptic movies. I’d be willing to bet that I own more knock-offs than I do the movies that were copied.
My only hope walking into Doomsday was that Neil Marshall would not only play off the surface elements of these films, but also attempt to match their craftsmanship. Unfortunately, this was one of the most inept, frustrating action movies I have ever seen, with absolutely no sense of pacing, composition or suspense. What makes it especially baffling is that Marshall has shown that he has a good eye for these elements in his previous movies. Maybe Doomsday was so big that it got away from him.
Any movie where I spend most of the running time wishing I was at home watching 1990: The Bronx Warriors or Phoenix The Warrior is a complete waste of time.
