While I found Doomsday's because of competitor Never Back Down to be a loving homage and take on the cliche sports genre I found Doomsday to be much more of a cheap rip off better material. While I grant it's a fine line that Doomsday crosses no part of it ever feels like more than just a relensing of better movies with worse actors. Scenes are torn liberally from films like (among many others) Escape from New York, 28 Days Later, Mad Max, Aliens, Road Warrior and Lord of the Rings each to far less effect than the first times. I'm surprised at how this turned out as I think Marshall's own The Descent is one of, if not, the best horror film of the past decade. For every creative and well played decision in The Descent, he has made a poor choice in design and concept in Doomsday. The acting is uniformly mediocre to awful. Alexander Siddig, an actor who made small roles memorable in Kingdom of Heaven and Syriana, gives a career worse performance, as does Malcolm McDowell (who is in my running for worst performance of the year). Rhona Mitra seems to be trying but she lacks the action presense of Kate Beckinsale's Underworld character who she seems to be modeled after, down to the tight leather outfit (let alone great action heroines like Linda Hamilton in T2 or Sigourney Weaver in the Alien series). To be honest this was so mediocre and inept at times that I'm a bit worried The Descent was a happy accident in Marshall's career. While it has some enjoyable and exciting (if poorly editied) action scenes I really can't recommend this at all.
Overall Score: 3/10
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