Doomsday is writer/director Neil Marshall’s follow-up to the excellent 2005 horror sleeper hit, The Descent, which was one of the most original, edge-of-your-seat horror flicks to come along in quite some time. This time out, Marshall is heading into Mad Max territory for the post-apocalyptic Doomsday.

A plague known as the “reaper virus” is quickly depleting the population of Great Britain. Unable to find a cure and hoping to prevent further outbreak, the unaffected are evacuated and the rest are left in a permanent quarantine. All but forgotten decades later, the virus once again resurfaces, this time outside of the quarantined area. In order to find a cure, a group of operatives is sent into the “hot zone” to search for a cure.

The cast includes Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Alexander Siddig, Adrian Lester and Sean Pertwee.

When a movie isn’t pre-screened for critics, there’s usually a pretty good reason. Sadly, Doomsday is further confirmation of the rule rather than the exception. Actually, not pre-screening this one was a smart move on Universal’s part. It has no need for critics because the people who will enjoy this movie are very unlikely to possess the cognitive skills or attention span to read a review anyway. Those looking to satisfy a bloodlust via B-movie style cinema should be at least moderately satisfied.

Neil Marshall shows only brief glimpses of the talent he exhibited in Dog Soldiers and The Descent. The rest of the time Marshall appears to have been studying under the tutelage of notorious hack director Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Event Horizon) as the majority of Doomsday is as brainless as any one of Anderson’s pantheon of forgettable works.

Besides being merely a poor film, Doomsday is hysterically unoriginal, ripping off random parts of any and every post-apocalyptic movie or grade-B road flick it could get its claws into. The most notorious bastardization is of the Mad Max series, particularly Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome — such an egregious rip-off that George Miller should receive a credit (which he surely wouldn’t want) to avoid shouts of plagiarism. The gang of biker warlords look like a mix of hard core ’80s punk and a Kiss cover band. They snarl and scream and flex their muscles, outfitted from head to toe in tats, piercings and neon colored spiked mohawks. Still, they illicit more chuckles than terror.

It’s almost inexplicable how little of the talent Marshall exhibited in his previous works comes through here. To give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe working with the big boys at Universal didn’t gel with the indie-minded Marshall. Either way, he’s certainly got some explaining to do.

But if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all right? Well, Marshall still manages to throw in some intense action scenes that hint at the thrills of Descent. Unfortunately, they are almost always followed by another eye-rolling scene. Rhona Mitra is sexy and tough as world savior Eden Sinclair, but no one could be sexy enough to save this one.

If you haven’t seen The Descent or never checked out the classic Max Mad trilogy, do yourself a favor and make use of that new flat screen instead of this trip to the movies.

Tags: Doomsday