'Doomsday' concept fails to meet its potential

By Kathleen Grohman

Reminiscent of films like "28 Days Later" and "I Am Legend," "Doomsday" includes all the ingredients for a good disease-disaster-apocalyptic-thriller. The movie does a good job of balancing the fear factor by combining creepy, tense settings and gross images with startling, jump-in-your-seat action.

Written and directed by Neil Marshall, the film begins when an epidemic caused by the Reaper virus sweeps through Scotland, killing thousands of people.

In the midst of the resulting worldwide panic, Scotland is completely quarantined by a huge concrete wall that is welded shut and maintained by automatic guns that shoot anything that comes within 12 feet.

Thirty years later, the Reaper virus reappears in Britain and a special task force is sent back over the wall to search for a cure.

The team is headed by the movie's heroine, Eden Sinclair, who maneuvers the team through a group of cannibalistic, goth, punk rebels with action-hero prowess.

Sinclair is played by Rhona Mitra, best known from her role on "The Practice" and its spin-off, "Boston Legal." She pulls off the attractive, hard-core female, often saving the lives of her male colleagues.

Once over the wall, the team drives through an abandoned and overgrown country looking for survivors, especially whatever they can find about Dr. Kane, played by Malcolm McDowell, who had been the lead researcher during the outbreak. The first action sequence takes place in an abandoned hospital filled with blood-splashed tarps covering victims that succumbed to the Reaper virus' bloody, pustule-and-boil-filled fury. The gore in the movie initially grosses out the audience and ends up going so far over the top that toward the end, it becomes grotesquely comical -- think "Snakes on a Plane."

While there were some intriguing themes about human nature, natural selection and politics, most were not developed, taking the movie from a potentially insightful premise to a video game-like exaggeration.

While it would be interesting to see how different groups of survivors formed new societies, "Doomsday" only displays a heavily-tattooed, blood-thirsty gang lead by Sol, played by Craig Conway, and a King Arthur-type castle, complete with knights and jousting.

Time could have been spent developing the story lines about Sinclair's sentimental connection to Scotland's plight, how the cure could be used for political advantage or how the survivors discovered the power in what natural selection had afforded them.

This time was instead spent showing different ways that someone could be decapitated and the different angles that blood could spray onto the walls or, on many occasions, onto the camera lens. But perhaps too much theme emphasis would have taken away from the shock value.

One of the movie's highlights was an awesome car chase involving a brand new sports car speeding through Scotland's countryside.

But at the end, the audience is left with some lingering questions, which point out the potential logistical flaws of a science fiction film. How does the Reaper virus spread? If the quarantine only happened 30 years ago, why would people believe that there is nothing on the other side of the wall? And, most troubling, why are there no children or old people?

Grade: C+

Contact Kathleen Grohman at (408) 551-1918 or kgrohman@scu.edu.