Neil Marshall’s a smart director, and he’s also very genre-aware. I liked his Dog Soldiers quite a bit, as a relatively fresh take on werewolves, which managed to do a lot with a small budget. I was less enthusiastic about The Descent, which I reviewed here back in 2005.

With Doomsday, he’s changed genres a bit. It’s certainly at least as gory as his earlier work, but this is a science fiction thriller in the vein of Escape from New York, which it obviously gets a lot of inspiration from (the heroine wears an eye patch for a bit, even). There are also bits clearly inspired by the Mad Max movies.

The plot isn’t particularly complicated, and it doesn’t matter that much either, to be honest. 20 years ago, in 2008, a virus broke out in Scotland, and the British government quarantined off all of it with a huge wall following the old path of Hadrian’s Wall. Now, the virus has broken out in London, and it turns out there are survivors in Scotland, who might hold the key to a cure. Badass paramilitary cop Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), who barely escaped from Scotland as a child, leads a team of soldiers into the quarantine zone to find and bring back the cure.

That’s about it, really. As I said, the plot doesn’t really matter that much. Of course, the Scots have gone feral, divided into two camps, a Mad Max group of cannibalistic punk rockers (why is it that the fall of civilization equals mohawks and facial piercings?), and another group who have regressed to the middle ages, living in and around a castle, ruled over by a feudal lord. And obviously, the military mission goes pear-shaped really quickly, most of the soldiers are killed, and the few survivors need to resort to cunning and gory violence to survive and perhaps get what they came for.

This is not a perfect movie. The acting is ok, although Rhona Mitra has never been my idea of a great actress, but she’s good looking, and convincingly badass in this. The plot is simple and a bit thin. But the movie’s fun to watch, at times very much so, and it knows what it’s trying to do. As I mentioned, Marshall is genre aware, and this is at least as much a homage to his favourite movies as the Kill Bill movies were to Tarantino’s favourites. Hell, there’s even a synthesizer based score that sounds like anything John Carpenter did in the 80s.

In summary, recommended if you like Escape from New York, any of the Mad Max movies, and genera over the top action and gore. Not recommended if you don’t have a sense of humor, or can’t watch movies for pure entertainment, without taking them too seriously.

Warren Ellis’ new webcomic Freakangels goes live Friday, the 15th of February. It’s SF/Steampunk with sexy goth chicks. From the creator of Transmetropolitan and a bunch of other great stuff. It’s bound to be good.