John's Movie Musings

What was the last, good post-apocalyptic movie you saw? Escape From New York? Mad Max? Those are classic, fun movies. They're also almost thirty years old. For all of you who saw them in the theater...HA HA!

But why is this genre so full of crappy movies? Fear of a nuclear holocaust has been with us for over fifty years. Plagues aren't exactly a new idea, either. But for some reason, Hollywood can't get past Mad Max. Come on writers, I'm begging for a great story within that desolation.

So Doomsday is yet another crapfest set fifty years after "the virus that changed everything." It's a British movie, so I found it hilarious that the virus pops up in Glasgow and all of Scotland has to be quarantined behind a wall. Perhaps the director got tired of all the praise Braveheart got, hehe.

The movie doesn't decend into Mad Max territory right away. Instead, it starts out pretty good. The movie takes place in 2067 and has a very "near future" feel to it. Of course, this is accepting a future that has a wall around the whole of Scotland.

But then tragedy strikes. At about the 20-minute mark, every scene is worse than the one before it. Consistently. To the end. I'm not kidding. The director stops filming Doomsday and moves to Mad Max. After a few minutes of that, he moves to Braveheart. It's like he visited Scotland for the first time and said, "Hey look! Castles!" He would then tell his writer with confidence, "They would survive a plague. And people would give up central plumbing to live in one."

Yeah, I'm still trying to shake this from my memory. Please avoid it.

Grade: D-