Reviews

Doomsday

Two-hour nihilistic melee

By ELIZABETH FLOCK | March 19, 2008

1.5 Stars

SEXY BUT UNINSPIRED: Rhona Mitra as Major Eden Sinclair.

Cult-favorite director Neil Marshall follows up his acclaimed post-apocalyptic The Descent with this graphic, bigger-budgeted mess. When in 2008 Scotland faces a viral outbreak that threatens to spread across Europe, the country is quarantined and its people left to die gruesomely. Twenty-seven years later, the “Reaper Virus” is back, and now it’s threatening England. Major Eden Sinclair (a sexy but uninspired Rhona Mitra) leads a team into Scotland to locate the barbarous survivors and find a cure; they have 48 hours to complete the mission before the virus menaces the entire planet. Marshall borrows copiously from ’80s classics like George Miller’s Mad Max and John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, outdoing them in violence and depravity, vainly yoking derivative scenes together in what becomes a two-hour nihilistic melee. At best a reminder of doomsdays past, at worst a symptom of what’s ailing the genre today. 105 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Circle + suburbs

Related: The Descent, Portishead, Justice, More

Topics: Reviews , John Carpenter, Neil Marshall, Rhona Mitra, More

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