Doomed

Writer/director Neil Marshall, who was noticed by genre fans in 2002 with Dog Soldiers, really cemented himself as a talent to watch with the taut, almost unbearably tense horror/suspense film The Descent, easily one of the most frightening and original horror flicks I've seen.

So I was looking forward to his follow-up, and even though the trailers were less than stellar, I expected to wholeheartedly enjoy Doomsday.

Unfortunately, the movie's a bit of a mess.

Doomsday wears its influences on its sleeve: its storyline is not only inspired by John Carpenter's classic Escape From New York, but marshall fashions the rudimentary computer graphics in the prologue and the font in the titles directly after that picture.  Other movies directly cribbed from include The Road Warrior, Aliens, and The Warriors.  Which is fine - one of my favorite flicks of recent years, the brilliant Hot Fuzz, make an art out of recycling elements from popular action movies.  But where Marshall stumbles with Doomsday is tone.  

At first, we think this is going to be a fun ride, with the heroine plucking out her fake eye to peer around corners, and mustache-twirling villains plotting the way they can destroy British and Scottish citizens.  Then a character gets cooked and eaten, and suddenly things aren't so much fun anymore.  

The movie struggles to erase the mean-spiritedness of this sequence with subsequent explosions, gunfire, and chase scenes, not to mention a bizarre trip to a feudal castle with everyone dressed in armor (absolutely the most original turn of events in the film), but despite some good action and copious amounts of in-your-face gore, overall Doomsday makes me wonder if The Descent's greatness was a fluke.  Time will tell, I suppose.