Doomsday

If only Neil Marshall had included a brutal decapitation involving a kitchen sink, it’d have made it clear that the Dog Soldiers/The Descent director was gleefully taking the piss out of a whole history of B movie madness. In lieu of such a visual metaphor for "intentional cluster fuck of ideas,” it seems more likely that Marshall’s ambition exceeds his grasp, but the relentless zeal with which he savages the screen makes the head-scratching cauldron of genre soup a bloody pleasure to behold, even if it’s a little difficult to digest. Gearing up as a sci-fi plague/virus action flick with some preamble about the British authorities quarantining Scotland into an uninhabitable dead zone to contain the dreaded Reaper virus, Doomsday quickly begins shuffling through a kaleidoscope of styles when the virus resurfaces in London. Stone-cold solider Eden Sinclair and a team of military specialists are sent back over the wall into Scotland to investigate a resurgence of human life and to bring back the potential cure said life would mean. They soon encounter a feral band of tribal anarchist punks with a penchant for rock theatrics and cannibalism dwelling in the post-apocalyptic rubble, and that’s when the crazy really sets in. Gloriously gruesome and brutal in its highly functional fight sequences, Marshall’s inner gore-hound gushes out in full horror show mode all over Doomsday. The loving construction of post-apocalyptic environments and use of practical effects and custom gadgets are well documented in three fascinating production special features that favour legit behind-the-scenes footage over the talking heads and redundant film clips that drag down so many DVD packages. Doomsday is quite compelling in its insanity and it’s a hell of a fun ride if sense can be considered a non-issue. But by the time Marshall has shoved Sinclair through medieval gladiator brawls, cannibal holocaust punks and a ballistic, Road Warrior-on-steroids car chase, a kitchen sink death doesn’t seem far off.