Scotland finally gets devolution thanks to a rampant virus and a corrupt British government
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
Drama, Comedy, Romance, Science Fiction, Musical… cinema is filled with grand, sweeping, big tent genres. And yet, so often Cinapse’s particular brand of cinephilia dwells in the subgenres. Too numerous to list, subgenres are where the meat is really added to the bone of deep cut cinema. And one of the greatest subgenres of them all is the post-apocalyptic picture! This month we’re celebrating the release of author David J. Moore’s World Gone Wild, Restocked and Reloaded 2nd Edition: A Survivor’s Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Movies with a curated selection of some of the Cinapse team’s very favorite and most beloved post apocalypse films – all of which are highlighted in Moore’s exhaustive love letter!
The Pick: DOOMSDAY (2008)
Featured Guests
Watching Neil Marshall’s Doomsday is like revisiting the best post-apocalypse movies from the eighties. You know he loves Escape from New York and The Road Warrior. Doomsday even has the same font on the title scene as EFNY, and his story is a virtual scene-for-scene homage to that film, while still being completely original. The story starts with a devastating virus (called the Reaper virus) ripping through the United Kingdom like an angel of death. The continent is split in half (England / Scotland) by a wall not unlike the borders which the Roman Empire once instated. The infected half are left to die off, and the rest of England’s population are put in boroughs and tenements to account for the lack of space. Thirty years after the viral apocalypse, the Reaper virus returns to England, and the government sends a team into the dead zone to find survivors of the last plague: it seems that those individuals who’ve survived in the northern half are immune, and therefore have blood which can be used to devise a cure. The team is led by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), and like the character she was modeled from (Snake Plisskin) she has only one eye and a bad attitude (but she wears the patch only on occasion). When the team arrives in the “no fly zone,” they are seized by a tribe of savages, the survivors of the last plague. From this point on in the movie, there is hardly a moment to catch your breath. The character named Sol in the film is basically Lord Humungous and Wez combined from The Road Warrior, and he’s a good crazy villain. His Siouxsie-Sioux look-alike girlfriend, Viper, is a great cinematic creation, a perfect foil for Mitra’s tough-girl character. The final road chase obviously recalls the stuff in the Mad Max series. Marshall looks like he had a ball filming it. There’s great stuff here. Check out some of the details in this movie. Even the spray paint on the cars and walls is interesting to look at. The action scenes are a tad bit disjointed and filmed too close to the action and are cut too quickly, but repeated viewings smooth things out a bit. Rhona Mitra is great, and it’s nice to see her in the center of a big picture; she makes an excellent heroine. The supporting cast is all top-notch: with Bob Hoskins as a good guy and Malcom McDowell as Kane, an ostracized doctor, and a king of sorts of a medieval castle. The John Carpenter-sounding score by Tyler Bates is a great addition to a most enjoyable (and extremely gory) movie.
Spencer Brickey, a screenwriter with a focus on action, horror, and dark comedies.
From the outside, Doomsday is clearly meant to be an Escape From New York riff (The one-eyed “president of what?” badass, the walled city, even the font!), but, either accidentally or on purpose, it instead is a near perfect homage to the era of Italo-exploitation, or as I’ve always had fun calling it, Italoshlock.
For about 30 years, from the early ‘70s and petering out in the late ‘90s, almost no one was better at putting out exploitation films than Italy. Didn’t matter the genre or the plotline or the tastefulness; if it was popular in the States, the Italians would make a hundred copies or more of ‘em. Filmmakers with names like Lucio Fulci, Ruggero Deodato, Bruno Mattei, and Sergio Martino would put out films cheap and quick; they’d pick up a few cues from whatever they were ripping off (Desert warlords, zombies, kung-fu, Vietnam), and then usually add gallons of blood and gratuitous nudity. These films were always hodgepodges of whatever was cool at the time, and were meant to be played to zonked out audiences at dollar theaters on 42nd street.
This same type of “kitchen sink” approach to storytelling is exactly what Doomsday ends is. Like a play on the old saying ,“If you don’t like the genre, wait 15 minutes!”. Doomsday opens as a zombie film, before becoming an Escape From New York riff, before becoming a Mad Max riff, an Excalibur riff for a hot second, before landing back at Mad Max in the climax, respectively. The constantly bounces between storylines (and tones) makes it impossible to nail down where Doomsday is going next.
Which, to be honest, isn’t a strength here. Italoshlock is a bit of a hit-and-miss genre; holds true here. Doomsday is more interested in the set dressings of its constantly changing world than on the actual characters that inhabit it. Everything and everyone is so one-note, there’s really no world to actual dig into, even if it does show you a dozen different ones.
Doomsday suffers what many of these types of films do; A director, Neil Marshall, who is infatuated with the genre fare of his youth, looking to make a mix-matched “love letter”. But, all he’s really done is make a Xerox of a Xerox. Only the Italians have figured out how to make it work, and I’m pretty sure the secret is hidden within the Vatican’s Vaults.
The Team
Look, I love Doomsday. I saw it in theaters as a nerd who already actively loved the films of Neil Marshall, the films of John Carpenter, etc. I didn’t revisit the film for this edition of Two Cents so I’ll keep this brief and in dialog with my former self, who wrote a piece about Doomsday being less than the sum of its inspirations. Look, former self, it may be true that Doomsday doesn’t reach the high highs of Snake Plissken and wouldn’t exist at all without the inspirations that came before it. Former me also needs to chill out and just have a rip-roaring time at the movies with a gorgeous and tough lead in Rhona Mitra and top tier character actors like Malcolm McDowell and Bob Hoskins running around?! I’m not sure what I wanted back then but my fond memories of this film have long outlasted whatever state I was in at that time.
I watched Doomsday with my wife back when it came out. I remembered liking it but never felt the urge to dive back in. She remembered some of the gorier and most twisted moments with the cannibals and wrote it off completely.
So, this week I dove back into it at the request of the Two Cents crew and it was a mixed bag for me, though more good than bad.
The good? Bob Hoskins is in it. The heroine is a badass. The gory moments definitely deliver. And, the final car chase is fantastic George Miller-esque fun.
The bad? There’s nowhere near enough Bob Hoskins in it. The early bits are a bit plodding. And I wouldn’t mind more of those gory moments.
The story didn’t always work for me, but once it got cranking, the visuals were strong. And, in a film like this, that matters most I think. But, I wanted to highlight something I doubt most here will: the soundtrack. The score from the great Tyler Bates, combined with fantastic pop, new wave, and punk music of the 70s through the late 90s, was a perfect backdrop for the film. For me, I think it was the biggest highlight and I fully expect that a few of the tracks will be stuck in my head for the remainder of the week… and then some.
You can imagine the conversation. Someone poses the idea “what if we needed Hadrian’s Wall again?“. Built around 1900 years ago, an architectural feat of the Roman Empire that marked one of the frontiers of it’s territory, as well as a useful means to keep those pesky Scottish savages at bay. In Doomsday, a modern rebuild is required thanks to the Reaper virus, an outbreak in Scotland turning people into rabid monsters. The solution of the British government, a 60ft tall rebuild of the wall and lethal military force to hold the line against the remaining infected, and the survivors who choose a more primal way of surviving. 30 years after this callous move, an isolated case of the Reaper virus resurfaces in London, prompting a foray North of the wall the track down a missing virologist and his research, which might be the only thing preventing the rest of the country being thrown back into the dark ages.
In spirit, its “what if Escape from New York, but Scotland”, but Neil Marshall’s genre predilections are cast further afield with Doomsday roiling out of a chop-shop with parts from Mad Max, 28 Days Later, The Warriors, The Hills Have Eyes, Apocalypse Now, and more. It’s a fun mix, even if the end product lacks the focus and impact of Marshall’s better regarded features Dog Soldiers and The Descent. But where else do you see a horsebound knight take on an armored soldier, or an agent wielding a high tech eyeball targeting system up against a horde of spike wielding savages. It’s the the near-future going toe-to-toe with a savage, feudal state. The Brits handle period pieces better than most so the film looks great, and we also get a bit of regional gravitas with appearances from Malcom McDowell and Bob Hoskins, and a breakout turn from Rhona Mitra. After making her name in the UK as the original live action model of gaming icon Lara Croft, she went on to a number of supporting roles in tv and film, before landing a one-two punch in Doomsday and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. She certainly does herself no harm as the woman at the middle of it all, driven by a personal motive and of course a bit of a chip on her shoulder.
Its gnarly (and just the right amount of silly) fare, but there is more here if you know what to look for. A scrutiny of the callous decision (and worldwide condemnation) of the UK turning its back on a swath of its populace, opens up into a broader commentary on that North/South divide. One that swirls around social class and economic and investment. One might also spot a broad swipe at Scotland and the ever persisting sentiment of devolution. Superficial to be sure, but they only add to the ‘what if…’ of it all. Adding to the grim undercurrent of Marshall’s messy genre mashup.
@Texas_Jon on Twitter
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