DID YOU HEAR ME LOUD ENOUGH? NO? THEN TURN UP THE VOLUME EVEN FURTHER BECAUSE I DON'T THINK PLUTO HEARD WHAT WAS GOING ON!!!Now, I thought that
Rambo was the loudest movie I've ever witnessed in the cinema (prior to which was
The Matrix Revolutions) - but nope -
Doomsday is now,
THE. LOUDEST. MOVIE. IN. EXISTENCE.No joke, the only thing louder I've ever personally experienced was when
CKY came to my university and I was stood about 15ft from the left bank of main speakers (I couldn't hear right for at least three days).
So indeed,
Doomsday is loud. It's more than loud, it's brash. It's absolutely unapologetically over-the-top, it's ludicrously in your face, and just in case you didn't quite get the point, here's another insanely LOUD track from Tyler Bates (who seemingly doesn't know the meaning of subtlety, nor gentle, or even the phrase
"just shut the fuck up for a minute").
As for the film itself - moving away from the sheer loudness of it all - well, it's most definitely a movie made by a fan for the fans. Even the moderately movie literate will be able to list off a series of apocalyptic action classics.
Escape From New York and
Mad Max (all three of them) being the key influences on the script, heck the film even owes a debt of gratitude to
28 Days Later - without which I'm sure
Doomsday wouldn't have gotten off the ground, or at least to the sheer extent that it did.
Derivative is a key term most definitely, when talking about this flick, but in the best sense of the word. If John Carpenter was still making good movies today, he'd make
Doomsday ... but he's not, so here's Marshall (clearly a huge fan) nodding profusely in the old master's direction for two straight hours.
It's John Carpenter, as filtered through the nuts of Neil Marshall. This is clear from the immediate outset (at least to the movie nerds watching) - the font of the titles is the exact same as that of Carpenter's best work -
The Thing and
Escape From New York to name but two, I was half-expecting to see Dean Cundey's name flash up under Director of Photography!
Even the explanation of the outbreak of the "Reaper" virus, particularly the
Escape From New York riffing graphics leave you almost confused that Jamie Lee Curtis isn't doing the voice over.
Like I said, it's derivative, but positively so. A fan movie for the fans, but with a pinch of Neil Marshall's own brand of balls - the sheer humour splattered all over the splatter itself, to name but one example. So indeed, Scotland has been hit by the Reaper Virus, people are dropping like flies and Hadrian's Wall has been re-built to seal the country off, an act which seems to piss off the entire world in Britain's direction, a side-element that was pleasantly surprising.
Needless to say, as we all saw in the trailer, the Reaper Virus breaks out in England and it's up to Rhona Mitra and her Plissken-riffing techno-eye (as well as some other army-types) to venture into the Scotland of 2035, which now resembles the Chernobyl of today.
From here on out, it's almost entirely non-stop ear-drum-abuse, breath-thieving action sequences, and the limits of over-the-top being pushed to their very, well, limits ... just wait for the Can Can dance ... seriously.
It was at this point I fully understood the vibe of this film, which saw me through to the end, and proved to be a useful tool. However, at the half way point it all starts to go a tad wobbly as the
Escape From New York and
Mad Max 2 references begin to take over (even if it is superbly entertaining), the lowest point being (unfortunately) Malcom McDowell's speech and the Plissken-overload one-on-one battle.
I'm being careful not to spoil, but to be honest what I am saying has been seen before. If you've seen
Escape From New York,
Mad Max 2 and
28 Days Later then you've essentially seen
Doomsday. However, the difference is this is a loving mash-together of the lot and turned up to 111, never mind 11. You've certainly not seen such a film to this scale, to this extent before ... and quite possibly not to these depths of depravity at times. This movie is brutal, brutal like Tyler Bates' score ... indeed.
The loudest, brashest, most chaotic, gripping, exhausting and even downright terrifying post apocalyptic movie for the fans, by a fan, that you'll ever see ... at least until someone writes a two hour love letter to
Doomsday anyway.
A solid 7.5/10 ... just pack some ear plugs to be on the safe side.
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