ZiaZine July 2008 : 11
of her skull and use to peer around corners. Now, keep in mind all of the above transpires in only minutes of the minute running time ( min- utes in the uncut DVD version). e movie really gears up when Eden and her team climb into a high-tech armored vehicle, roll into Scotland and encounter an army of modern primitives who crib their fashions from the Mad Max trilogy, favor attacking in running waves of Days Later zombie-like menace and have developed a taste for human flesh. e rest of Doomsday is pure chase, as Eden and a few survivors fend off this horde, search for a cure and try to make it back to the wall for a rendezvous pickup home. It’s ridiculous, but it’s also trying to be outland- ish. Marshall has basically made a Frankenstein out of classic horror and sci-fi movies. e opening borrows It’s ridiculous, but it’s also trying to be outlandish. Marshall has basically made a Frankenstein out of classic horror and sci-fi movies. Escape From New York, and from then on Marshall rummages through ’s, ’s and ’s movies from which to crib. And Mar- shall makes these nods outright, naming one sol- dier in Eden’s team Miller (as in George Miller, the director of the Mad Max trilogy) and Carpenter (as in John Carpenter, the director of Escape From New York). Mitra’s Eden Sinclair herself—with her chiseled jaw line, deadpan comic delivery and knack for going ballistic at the drop of a hat—could be the love child of Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken and Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor. And, as befitting a sci-fi action movie heroine, Mitra spends the almost the entirety of the movie in a body- hugging black jumpsuit and barely messes up her hair, even when she’s lopping off heads. Marshall has pulled off such recombinant filmmaking before. His debut Dog Soldiers, which went straight to DVD in the U.S., cannily massaged an action-movie premise—military field-training exercises in Scotland— into a horror movie. It is infused with movie references throughout, particularly to the work of Sam Raimi, with one character named Bruce Campbell, after the Ameri- can actor who starred in Raimi’s Evil Dead series. e ’s obviously hold a special place in Marshall’s heart, and Doomsday is riddled with cheeky snippets from that decade. He works in nods to practically for- gotten genre fare such as Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire and even drops in throwaway music from the era, always played for a lark. When one of Eden’s team is submitted to the tribal Glasgow survivors’ human grill, the gang’s DJ (!) plays the Fine Young Cannibals’ “Good ing.” And later, when Marshall recreates the final chase from e Road Warrior, pitting the cannibals’ post-apocalyptic punk cars against Eden’s James Bondian Aston Martin DBS, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes” blares on the soundtrack. Clearly, Marshall is having a bit of fun with his first big-budget movie—and we haven’t mentioned the movie’s middle, which involves Mc- Dowell’s Kane lording over a medieval stronghold that is equal parts Excalibur sword and sorcery and Monty Python surreal. All of the above cinematic alchemy doesn’t mean that Doomsday has a believable character or grounding performance to save its life—you suspect all Mitra was required to do is look good in skintight clothing and be able to be pout pithily—but any movie that walls off Scotland within its opening minutes isn’t exactly aim- ing for Oscars. Doomsday isn’t going to be making any critic’s year-end top lists, but as a mash note to ’s B pictures, it’s as mindlessly entertaining as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodri- guez’s love letters to ’s drive-in movies. doomsday is available now on dvd from Universal [ JULY 2008 + monitorTHIS! + 11 ]
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