Doomsday

In the future of a few years ago, a highly contagious virus starts killing people in Glasgow. There is no cure and it starts to spread rapidly, too rapidly to contain. So the evil English build a huge wall along where Hadrain’s Wall used to be and make Scotland a no go zone. In what seems to be a few minutes, the Scottish go feral. The whole of Scotland is left to its own devices.

Cut to modern day London, the year – 2035. The place is a bit of a mess. Politicians are devious and self serving and there is mass poverty, riots and unrest. So things are really different from now ok?

The virus that struck Glasgow is suddenly discovered in London and everyone starts to shit themselves. But a secret has been kept from everyone. Satellite imagery shows that there are people in Scotland. Lots of them. Somehow they have survived. An elite team headed by the hot but hard Eden Sinclair are dispatched to Scotland to see how they survived. They have 48 hours or London is fucked.

So that’s the plot. Sounds like a mix of a lot of films doesn’t it? Well it is.

Doomsday starts like a zombie film, then becomes Escape from New York (possibly Escape from LA too but I have successfully repressed all memories of it). When the elite team arrive in Glasgow, it is suddenly Aliens with Scottish people playing the role of Xenomorphs. Then it becomes Mad Max 2/3, then a violent Robin Hood, then Mad Max again, then back to Escape from New York. There again is the plot, but told in a different way.

The thing is, while this film teeters on the edge of being bad, (sometimes very close to the edge), it doesn’t quite fall. It a blatant mix of a ton of other films and genres but it’s a fun, violent mix. Doomsday was written and directed by Neil Marshall who wrote/directed Dog Soldiers and The Descent. Both of these similarly mixed genres and movie types and were both gory entertaining fodder. If you enjoyed them, you will like Doomsday. I did.