Doomsday

May 9 2008 by Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

(1hr 48mins) Starring: Rhona Mitra, Malcolm McDowell, Bob Hoskins, Craig Conway. Director: Neil Marshall

IF you were in Glasgow on April 3 this year, then we have some alarming news: you’re doomed!

In North East writer-director Neil Marshall’s new blood-fest, the Scottish city is the centre of an outbreak of a deadly Reaper virus, which ravages the body and leads to liquefaction of the organs.

The Labour government responds swiftly and decisively – for once – by constructing a reinforced steel wall along Scotland’s border, separating it from the rest of the UK and sacrificing five million innocent people to safeguard the world.

The repercussions will be horrendous: families torn apart, military-authorised culling of the infected, and a global shortage of malt whisky and lovely, buttery shortbread.

So begins the nightmarish scenario of Doomsday, a post-apocalyptic action romp with echoes of 28 Days Later and, worryingly, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

Marshall’s appetite for carnage, whetted in his first two films Dog Soldiers and The Descent, is sated here with dismemberment and decapitation on a much grander scale, including one character flambéd alive then eaten by a carnivorous rabble.

The film begins proper in London 2035.

The Prime Minister summons Department of Domestic Security chief Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins) to an urgent meeting. The Reaper virus has been detected in the capital and unless a cure is found in 48 hours, London will be ground zero for a global pandemic. Thankfully, satellite photographs reveal people alive and well on the streets of Glasgow. It seems there are survivors of the virus.

A crack team must cross the wall and find a cure, starting at the laboratory of scientist Dr Kane (Malcolm McDowell). Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), an evacuee from Glasgow during the initial outbreak, leads the covert mission.

“What happens if I don’t find anything up there?” Eden asks. “Then you needn’t bother coming back,” is the answer. Doomsday begins promisingly but skitters into the ridiculous once Eden and her team encounter barbaric survivors led by Sol – a chilling performance by South Shields-born actor Craig Conway – and his punk-rocker heathens.

Mitra’s ballsy heroine, who lost an eye in childhood and now uses her hi-tech falsie as a camera to peer around corners, is emotionally untouched by her journey into the dead zone, and consequently so are we.

Supporting cast suffer inglorious fates at the hands of Sol or Kane’s disciples, until the climactic car chase that sets every screech of burning rubber to Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes.

“A one is all that you can score,” declares singer Holly Johnson.

Marshall’s film warrants slightly more, but not much.