Film: More gloomsday than Doomsday

DOOMSDAY (18)

DIRECTED BY: NEIL MARSHALL

STARRING: RHONA MITRA, BOB HOSKINS, ADRIAN LESTER, MALCOLM MCDOWELL

THERE'S a subspecies of director out there that could collectively be classified as fanboy filmmakers. They may be talented, successful, and well versed in cinematic history, but what distinguishes them is the way they unashamedly embrace and take inspiration from ill-thought-of genre movies. Thanks to Star Wars and Indiana Jones, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are the godfathers of this type of filmmaking while Quentin Tarantino remains its most fervent practitioner and champion thanks to the way he repeatedly fashions edgy art-house fare from cheap exploitation flicks.

Then there's Peter Jackson, who may be its purest exponent, having taken fanboy love to its most obvious conclusion with his passionate King Kong remake. In each case, what marks these directors out as proper filmmakers as opposed to homage-happy hacks is their ability to take something considered trashy and disposable and let us experience it through their love-struck eyes by putting their own spin on it. In other words, they make it seem fresh and original, even when you know it's not.

Sadly this is precisely what Brit director Neil Marshall fails to do with his first decently budgeted studio film. Doomsday, a post-apocalyptic action movie set in Scotland after its decimation by a deadly virus, is a deliberate attempt to recapture the spirit of 1980s action classics such as Escape From New York, Mad Max 2 and, as usual, Aliens. Set in the year 2023, it revolves around an elite squad of soldiers led by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), a one-eyed hybrid of Ripley, Sarah Connor and Snake Plissken, who, as a child, was orphaned by the British government's decision to seal off Scotland in an effort to contain a civilisation-threatening plague, imaginatively named the Reaper virus. With the Reaper suddenly re-emerging in London, and the Prime Minister accidentally infected, this feminine ass-kicker is charged with leading her team into a still-quarantined Scotland to find a cure among a band of disease resistant survivors the government has secretly been keeping tabs on via satellite.

First port of call is Glasgow, where they encounter a savage bunch of motorbike riding, chain-swinging, Mohican-sporting cannibals led by a very shouty Craig Conway mustering his best Glaswegian growl. Under his leadership they've built a feral, primitive society, apparently based on a love of the Can-Can, the music of Fine Young Cannibals and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and, quite possibly, too many viewings of Barrowland-sourced copies of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It should be noted here that the Reaper virus supposedly came into effect in 2008 not 1988, but apparently the 1980s is the best decade to signify, as Bob Hoskin's government handler puts it: "hell on earth."

In any case, this horrifying combination has resulted in a hideous congregation who have no qualms about tearing apart several members of Eden's team, although to be fair, these victims are all so anonymously conceived that even when they're played by actors you might recognise (stand up Sean Pertwee) you'll be forgiven for not noticing or caring much about their demise.

Nor are you likely to be too impressed by Marshall's use of Glasgow. Unlike 28 Days Later, which made startling use of real London locations to give us a grim sense of how a population-killing plague would impact on a densely inhabited urban space, Marshall (who shot most of the film in South Africa) opts instead for a CGI-enhanced artist's impression of the city. Thus, while we get shots of red sandstone tenements and buildings bearing some resemblance to the GoMA or the Necropolis, everything tends to look cheap and generic, to the point where it could have been set anywhere.

And this, sadly, is the best stuff in the film. When the plot transfers to Black Ness castle, things go a bit Medieval Dead, with Eden and her rapidly dwindling numbers encountering knights on horseback, ball-and-chain flavoured gladiatorial combat and Malcolm MacDowell entrenched, Kurtz-like, in a fort, vomiting nonsense about pure bloods and revolutions and leaving the rest of the world to rot. It's pretty tedious and at some point Marshall remembers his characters are supposed to be hunting for a cure, so suddenly ups the action ante again with a highway chase that looks like an Audi advert with the tarmac-trashing car battles from Mad Max 2 morphed into it. Which pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with Doomsday.

As a director Marshall showed plenty of promise with his amusing werewolf horror flick Dog Soldiers and built on that promise with his claustrophobic nerve-shredder The Descent. Both those films demonstrated an ability to be extremely creative with limited resources and even though he cribbed large chunks of his plots and character dynamics for both movies from James Cameron's Aliens, it looked as if he was developing his own style. Alas with Doomsday, the only innovation he brings to proceeding is to update the shooting style of the films he loves. Nearly every idea – right down to the bunny massacring visual gag purloined from Mad Max 2 – belongs to somebody else. With a proper budget at his disposal, this was Marshall's chance to come into his own. Instead all he's proven is that he's not so much a fanboy filmmaker as a fanboy who got lucky.