Britflix: Doomsday

In these troubled times the world is suffering from a pandemic, whilst within the UK the prospect of Scottish independence is on the rise. Due to these factors now seems like a great time to revisit the B-Movie homage Doomsday.

In 2008 Scotland suffers from an outbreak of the deadly Reaper Virus. To protect the rest of the country the British government blockaded Scotland. This action makes Britain a pariah to the international community. By 2035 Britain is overpopulated and underemployed. Making matters worse the Reaper Virus has reappeared in London. In desperation, the government sends a military task force to find Marcus Kane (Malcolm McDowell), the last scientist researching a cure in Scotland. Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is assigned to lead the mission.

Doomsday was written and directed by Neil Marshall. He used the project to combine his two loves, ‘80s B-Movies and Scotland. Three of his six films were set in Scotland and those three films focus on soldiers who must go into the Scottish wilds and face an extraordinary threat. Marshall’s follow-up film, Centurion, even had a similar set-up because it focused on a small group of Roman soldiers trapped in Scotland and having to fight to return to safe territory.

What Marshall created was a throwback to the works of John Carpenter and George Miller. Doomsday had a similar premise to Escape from New York. Both films show a mass of land being isolated from the rest of the world, that place falls into anarchy, and a badass one-eyed special forces soldier has to go on a mission there. The film could have been called “Escape from Scotland” and it’s probably the closest we’ll ever get to a decent remake of Escape From New York. Scotland in the film had turned into the world of Mad Max due to the punk look and vehicular mayhem. The main villain of Doomsday in Scotland, Sol (Craig Conway), looked a lot like Wez from Mad Max 2.

Being a throwback was Doomsday’s best feature. It was unashamedly violent and sweary. For fans of bloodshed, Doomsday is the movie for you. People get their heads blown off, limbs get served, there were decapitations and a Medieval dual. Sean Pertwee has a particularly nasty fate and the film ends with a Mad Max-esque chase. I personally loved the moment one cannibal tried to jump from one car to another and ended up meeting the tarmac face first. Marshall and his team used their horror experience to the fullest for this film. The throwback nature of the film and the violence has helped Doomsday gain a cult following.

The motorbike chase in Glasgow seemed like an influence on Mad Max: Fury Road and Marshall does achieve a lot for a £17 million budget. Yet, the final chase was clearly filmed in South Africa, not Scotland. Mad Max: Fury Road blew Doomsday’s final chase out of the water – to be fair, Mad Max: Fury Road’s final chase beats most action films.

Although Doomsday was trying to show a dark post-apocalyptic version of Scotland, the scenes of motorbikes chasing people, punk music, Thunderdome style fights, cannibalism, and Scotsmen dancing the can-can in kilts just seemed like a normal night out in Glasgow.

Doomsday has ended up being more relevant now than it was back in 2008. It was a film that featured a deadly virus that leads to blocking parts of the country – in Doomsday’s case it was Scotland and Central London. The real power in government was the Prime Minister’s advisor, Michael Canaris (David O’Hara), who planned to use the virus as an opportunity. People of a certain political persuasion will probably think that was what the Johnson/Cummings relationship was like.

When it comes to the cast Malcolm McDowell gave the best performance. There was sincerity when he talked to Eden about what happened to his family. Conway was clearly having a blast because he gave an over-the-top performance as the cannibal Sol. O’Hara’s voice was gravelly and he sounded like he had eaten a load of sandpaper. It was different from his most famous role as Stephen the Irishman in Braveheart.

Marshall did bring back some of his regular actors for Doomsday. Conway and Pertwee were in Dog Soldiers and MyAnna Buring and Nora-Jane Noone were in The Descent. I like Noone so it was nice to see her in the film, even if her role was fairly small. Adrian Lester and Bob Hoskins were always a welcome presence.

Doomsday was an eclectic pastiche to action films of the ‘80s and for fans of those types of films Doomsday was an adequate substitution. Marshall and his team showed their passion for B-Movies and Marshall is still proud of his work.