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Doomsday

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: R
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

Doomsday kicked all kinds of great ass – even in ways that surprised me. Foxy, sword-wielding Rhona Mitra? Check. Car chases? Check. Punked out savages? Double check. And lastly, a rampaging virus cryptically monikered, the Reaper? Check again.

In the midst of my post-midterm funk, this flick proved to be the perfect remedy. Brain on steady auto-pilot and nerves severely damaged, Doomsday throttled adrenaline into my veins with the intensity of a methamphetamine injection and slapped the senses wide awake.

A nearly perfect amalgamation of Mad Max, Escape from New York, 28 Days Later, and a little King Lear thrown in for respectability, Doomsday fires on all cylinders in a raucous, directionless way without a knee-buckling urge to appease the critical masses. And who could ask for any more?

Years after the Reaper virus was contained and Scotland became a quarantined fortress, a virus strain escapes into London and threatens humanity once again. Enter an elite special ops team, commandeered by sexy Eden Sinclair (Mitra), that crosses into the hot zone to track down Kane (Malcolm McDowell), the self-proclaimed feudal lord of the apocalyptic society, in hopes of discovering a cure.

Director Neil Marshall is already getting lambasted for his derivative approach to the post-apocalyptic genre by sniveling, pretentious critics - the same people who heaped praise on him by the dump-truckfull when he churned out similar genre splicing in both Dog Soldiers and The Descent. So what gives?

Sure, the plot’s a stretch. Plot holes even Stevie Wonder could see run amok. Mitra’s far-fetched impersonation of Kurt Russell’s iconic Snake Plissken is a cruel bastardization, but in this bombastic menagerie of pyrotechnics and distant cousins of The Warriors, Doomsday isn’t terrible. Maybe, just maybe, it’s damned enjoyable.

And Mitra, our Ellen Ripley-esque heroine strutting around in black spandex? Ridiculous? Oh, sure. Fantastic? You better believe it, buster. Such absurdity propels a story reveling in scatological homages. In such, it’s a tribute to the aforementioned films and a worthy exploitation entry in its own right. Years from now, we might see a grindhouse double feature of Doomsday and You Kill Me.

Okay, probably not, but you get the idea.

Anyway, Marshall is the anti-auteur. Someone who relinquishes arthouse dribble and instead concocts operatic genre hybrids with gusto and pizzazz. With future projects down the pipeline like a horror-western, a sort of Unforgiven meets Lovecraft; it seems there are no conventions the bold Scotsman fears.

Doomsday’s pure, facile entertainment comes as a welcome relief. It’s rollicking entertainment without the gloss of video game adaptations or the juvenile redundancy of comic book re-vamps. For artistic merit it may come up short and yet, for my money, well, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend it.