Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. DOOMSDAY, the next from THE DESCENT and DOG SOLDIERS' Neil Marshall, has screened before to some pretty bad reviews, but it looks like now they gathered up all the bitchy comment cards and are on to the next round of screenings after more tweaking. I saw a preview for this at Comic-Con and it was pretty cool looking. I hope it lives up to the promise of a hard-ass '80s style post-apocalyptic adventure story directed by Neil Marshall... the following review gives some credence to that hope. Enjoy!
Saw an early screening of Doomsday last night at the Pacific, the latest movie from Neil Marshall. I avoided early reviews, but after seeing it last night I went back and took a look. My sense is that the screening I attended was much refined compared to prior cuts. Or I simply had a different reaction from the other reviewers. I've been a genre fan for years, and I've been disappointed as the latest batch move further and further from the hands on sfx with gritty anti-heroes that I loved. Too many times I've watched mediocre movies trying to appeal to mainstream audiences (I've seen far too many potentially great movies murdered in cold blood by a PG-13 rating...) and the end result is just piss poor. I've liked all of Marshall's films so far. As a low budget horror movie, I thought Dog Soldiers was very cool (doesn’t get better then super-gluing a stomach back together...). The Descent is by far one of the finest horror movies of this decade. Now, Doomsday.. When this movie gets going, it doesn't stop. The strength of this movie is that it doesn’t pretend to be anything but a genre movie that harkens back to the classics of the 80’s. The most obvious is Escape from NY where Carpenter, as he'd done in so many of his films, redefined the idea of a classic western figure (a la Precinct 13, Big Trouble in Little China, and a personal guilty pleasure...They Live) struggling against a modern or futuristic backdrop. I'm not going to jump into a synopsis here as it's just better for you to go into this movie without knowing what's coming next...all I can say is that this movie is fuckin-a all out of bubblegum. Yes, this film has some problems. They told us the movie wasn’t finished yet, but it seemed pretty close. It takes a little too long to get into the action and the score was very familiar to me in several spots (music from 28 Weeks Later even popped up once). Sometimes the stylistic mish-mash was overwhelming too, but I loved it. What is this film? It's really hard to categorize and you can't really pin it down. It has action, scares, humor and a very hot Rhona Mitra. The shitty reviews I'd read made me think this was going to be another virus/plague movie, but Dday isn’t a virus movie. Thankfully it’s an action movie, the kind we haven't seen in a long time. It’s a movie made by a guy who loves the same movies I do. It’s a movie for fans made by a fan. If you post this, my alias is swervnslyde. Cheers.
