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July 6th, 2008
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Dressed to kill

Neil Marshall descends into action camp
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April 9th, 2008 issue

By Rachel Shimp

COURTESY PHOTO
Baby, light my fire. Stuntwoman Lee-Anne Liebenberg as Viper in Doomsday.
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Doomsday


Directed by Neil Marshall
With Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell, Adrian Lester, David O'Hara and Craig Conway

For the Post
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a cigarette,” Major Eden Sinclair asks her boss after a particularly grueling day at work. The special forces cop has a job description one slug away from assassin. She’s just laid down a few bad guys and seen someone’s face explode in the process, which won’t be an isolated incident in the utterly ridiculous but plenty-fun Doomsday.
Rhona Mitra as Sinclair delivers the line with more weariness than Lauren Bacall’s “Anybody got a light?” in To Have and Have Not, but with the same intent. Addicted as she might be, the smoke is a stylistic prop. Armor, as her eyebrows might be, too. Immaculate grooming in disaster movies begs the question: Would people keep up these habits in the face of despair, as a coping mechanism? Neil Marshall’s latest action mash-up says, resoundingly, yes.
The British director’s last feature, the spelunking-gone-wrong horror flick The Descent was praised as an intelligent entry into the genre, with a strong cast of female badasses. He populates Doomsday with them as well, but Mitra carries the film on her lithe, muscular shoulders. With an asymmetrical bob and tight black garb, she looks almost exactly like Victoria Beckham.
Doomsday is hardly dull, but the uncanny resemblance buoyed me through the predictable moments: Imagine bionic-looking Beckham confronted with finding a virus cure, rather than a suitable spring bag, in 48 hours. Imagine her beheading her enemies, or popping a fake eyeball in and out of its socket. You get the idea.
Flash back 30 years prior to meeting Eden-the-cop, when we meet Eden-the-baby, who’s just another vulnerable little soul as Scotland gets quarantined because of a deadly “Reaper” virus. A wall is being built, blocking the country off from England, and these opening scenes echo the chaos of every recent disaster flick, with people trampling each other to squeeze one more bit of precious human cargo into the safe zone. But there is none here, except for lucky Eden. She’s taken to safety by the military at the last moment.
As usual, during these scenes we see the ugliness of people in crisis, and how social order decays with the growing corpses. The crowd acts and reacts with the savagery of zombies. But there’s no reincarnation for them, however gruesome. So it’s a surprise when evidence of new human life is eventually detected behind the wall.
The British government reveals this to Eden’s boss, Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins), after a strain of Reaper appears in a major UK city. He decides that she’s the best man for the job of going back into Scotland to find out why life has thrived. And beyond the wall is where the real fun begins.
Marshall’s fantastical future Scotland resembles a visit to Mad Max’s Thunderdome, and a Renaissance fair, perhaps in the same weekend. Now that it’s 2035, half of the Reaper virus survivors inhabit a kilt-filled, sadomasochistic playland. Stylistically, these people have taken it way further than plucking their eyebrows, proving that in the event of social apocalypse, you can still find purple dye for your Mohawk somewhere. The other segment of survivors lives in a castle compound miles away, and might as well have hawks resting on their chain-mailed arms. How the communities are linked may be the key to Eden’s success.
The bizarre outfitting isn’t new. Sci-fi and fantasy films from Dune to The NeverEnding Story have made the future look like ancient history. In Doomsday, they’re doing it — and everything else — for kicks. After all, why raid Harvey Nichols when you can raid the local fetish shop? All hell’s broken loose; you might as well look the part.
Rachel Shimp can be reached at rshimp@praguepost.com


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