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Doomsday
Two-hour nihilistic melee
By
ELIZABETH FLOCK
|
March 19, 2008
DOOMSDAY
" alt="photo of 'DOOMSDAY'">
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
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ARTICLES BY ELIZABETH FLOCK
MADE OF HONOR
| May 07, 2008
Scottish-related gags and other dumb stuff
WHEELING THROUGH HISTORY
| May 07, 2008
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THE GRAND
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DOOMSDAY
| March 19, 2008
Two-hour nihilistic melee
ROLL ON
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Skating toward a massacre
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