Doomsday

lethal virus spreads throughout a major country and kills hundreds of thousands. To contain the newly identified Reaper, the authorities brutally quarantine the country as it succumbs to fear and chaos. The literal walling-off works for three decades--until Reaper violently resurfaces in a major city. An elite group of specialists, including Eden Sinclair, is urgently dispatched into the still-quarantined country to retrieve a cure by any means necessary. Shut off from the rest of the world, the unit must battle through a landscape that has become a waking nightmare.

The first trailer to Neil Marshall’s Doomsday had a similar, sudden change in trajectory, but it wasn’t like Juno’s pffffft-to-tissues, it was zzzz-to-being attacked by a bat out of hell. Let me add to that: if the hell bat had a mohawk, a nice ass and a friggin’ chainsaw.

When a nasty virus rips through Scotland, the authorities in the U.K. get a little overzealous with the quarantine, building a big fat wall across the country and leaving millions behind to die. Decades later, the reemergence of the virus sends a special-forces team, led by the requisite flinty cop (Rhona Mitra), into the no-man's-land in search of a cure. They promptly discover more survivors than anyone expects; said survivors are predictably (a) angry and (b) hungry, and there the troubles begin.

This is a sprawling, messy, riotous, not-quite-finished picture. Marshall's last film, The Descent, was a lean, claustrophobic shocker without a wasted frame. Here he's thrown in the kitchen sink and a bit of plumbing to boot.

The unruly result could no doubt have been better.

Doomsday isn't quite funny enough to make up for its inherent nastiness, some of the dodgier effects would have been better off on the cutting room floor, and Marshall's often edging toward the wrong side of the line between homage and outright theft. But it's hard to watch it without having at least a little fun, and that's what Doomsday and all the movies it's aping are for.

My interest had hit a valley as soon as the trailer yelled what it was within the first two seconds with, “This is the end of the world!” But when that skull punch was followed by, “It was an epidemic unlike any other,” and expressed via a deadly virus spreading across a digital map of London in blood red, I could hear the words “Yeah, right!” echoing across the world. My Swatch watch hit “played out zombie time” and I decided to get in my Audi and drive to Hollywood on a fiery mission (from blog, ugh). I mean, they have a Victoria Beckham doppleganger fighting the undead? I like Bob Hoskins, but not that much. But then the skies opened or did they slam shut in time for a trashy punk rock concert?