Frankenstein’s Movie - DOOMSDAY

There are a lot of options out there to satisfy your thirst for post-apocalyptic action.  Try a little After the Bomb highway mayhem.  Maybe a good dystopian future is your thing.  Zombies are always a possibility.  Or, if you're Neil Marshall in 2008, you could just chop it all up and haphazardly sew the pieces into a lurching genre monstrosity called DOOMSDAY.

The Capsule:

Sometime in the early 21 century, Scotland is plagued by the Reaper Virus (note to scientists, don’t let heavy metal bands name your virus).  In order to contain the infection, the British government walls off the entire country.  When the Reaper Virus resurfaces in London 30-odd years later, the government sends an elite military team into the wasteland in search of Dr. Kane (Malcolm McDowell), who was working on a cure.  Led by badass Major Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), the team must battle hordes of cannibal punks and medieval knights (!) through decaying cities, open roadways, and tourist attractions of post-apocalyptic Scotland.  Even if they manage to find a cure and get out, they will have to deal with Canaris (David O'Hara), a nefarious politician who may not have the public’s best interest at heart.

DOOMSDAY is another case of the advantage of going in with super low expectations.  I heard this movie was terrible, even from a person who’s taste is remarkably close to mine (yes, those people do exist).  But I enjoyed director Neil Marshall’s other work, DOG SOLDIERS and especially THE DESCENT, so I figured as long as it wasn’t a bunch of people leaning in the corner pissing themselves for two hours, I would get something out of it.  I am happy to say it is not two hours of people pissing themselves.  It has some serious problems, but despite everything, I kind of dug it.  

This movie can make no claims at originality.  It’s filled with such blatant lifts that it can’t even be called homage with a serious face.  Obviously, I have no problem with rip-offs (see GRIZZLY, THE CAR,
HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP), even unofficial remakes like LOCKOUT.  The interesting thing with DOOMSDAY is that it doesn’t just rip-off one film, it rips-off a half dozen of them and blends them together into an oddball smoothie.  DOOMSDAY is clearly a take on ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and ROAD WARRIOR, but it also has elements of GHOST IN THE SHELL (the anime), ALIENS, 28 DAYS LATER, and most bizarrely, EXCALIBUR.  

It is amusing how brazen Marshall is about his cinematic larceny.   He’s kind of playfully smirking about it.  A Carpenter-esque electronic theme plays when Sinclair is being briefed about sneaking into and escaping from the Scottish surrogate for New York.  Two minor characters are named Carpenter and Miller.  The open roads are filled with MAD MAX cast offs, even though there is no real reason for it.  The scene where Sinclair’s team searches Kane’s seemingly abandoned lab evokes ALIENS so intentionally that they use some of the same dialogue.  Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs)—check, yellow rotating emergency lights—check, close quarter gun battles against silent, relentless foes—check.  The only thing missing was a power loader, and that is just because it suddenly changed gears back to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.  

Major Sinclair is more GHOST IN THE SHELL’s Major Motoko than Snake Plissken (although she does occasionally wears an eye patch when she’s using her robot eye to look around corners).   Rhona Mitra—who, it turns out, is not Cate Beckinsale—plays her with an icy proficiency.  She never loses her cool even when she is surrounded by people who want to kill and/or eat her.  The closest she comes is her irritation at the guard who keeps whacking her with his spear while she’s trying to talk, up until the moment she kills him with one blow.  Do not interrupt this woman.

She is such a badass that her boss gives her 46 hours to complete her mission.  If they had given her the full two days, she would have just spent the last two hours waiting at the extraction site, smoking.  They had to make it challenging for her.

Sol (Craig Conway), the chairperson of the Glasgow Cannibal League (not sure if that is the official title), is a kick.  He lacks Issac Hayes’ A1 King of New York coolness, but he makes up for it in batshit showmanship. His court is like a post-apocalyptic Cirque du Soleil, with brawling punks spinning on ropes, fire jugglers, and bikers doing stunts in the center ring.  Sol comes strutting out on stage with his fur lined leather coat and receding Mohawk, The Fine Young Cannibals blaring from the speakers.  He gets the crowd amped up about the impending execution/barbecue of one of his captives by throwing paper plates to the crowd.  It’s more of a symbolic gesture; these guys are more into grabbing handfuls of cooked meat than having a proper picnic.  

In fact, I think the whole cannibal angle is mostly for show.  There don’t seem to be enough non-cannibal affiliated people around for these guys to sustain a full man eating lifestyle.  Plus, it is shown that there are huge herds of wild cows just outside of Glasgow, so they are clearly not desperate for food.  Cannibalism is merely a status thing in Scotland.  Every once in a while they make a big show out of eating a dude.  They are kind of like lapsed Catholics only going to Mass at Christmas.  

Malcolm McDowell’s role is not nearly as meaty (cannibal pun!).  Kane is the standard brilliant scientist driven mad by isolation and paranoia, holding power through ruthless dogma.  He makes grandiose but senseless statements like, “In the land of the infected, the immune man is king.”  Since all the hundreds of survivors in Scotland are immune, doesn’t that make everyone a king?  Clearly people just go along with him because Malcolm McDowell makes everything sound dramatic and important.

More interesting by far is the whacked out medieval world he’s built.  His people haven’t just adopted a simpler way of life, they’ve gone full Renaissance Fair.  There are serfs and blacksmiths and dudes with hay carts.  I think I saw Hodor in one crowd shot.  Sinclair even has a fight with the Black Knight!  I am sure none of the extras had any idea they were in a movie set in the future.  And as soon as they escape the castle, bam, straight into the ROAD WARRIOR.  You could get whiplash from this movie.  

You could also get whiplash from the fight scenes, which unquestionably are the worst thing about the movie.  They are cut so quick and shaky, I had no idea what was going on most of the time.  Sinclair’s fight with Sol’s girlfriend, Tattoo Face (Lee-Anne Liebenberg, officially named Viper, but I’m sure you will agree Tattoo Face is more appropriate), is an absolute nightmare.  It plays out like an epileptic seizure until the moment Tattoo Face gets decapitated.  At least Marshall gave us a moment to appreciate that gag.

The Black Knight fight at least provided a few wide shots that last more than a half second.  This was especially important since the opponents are so unevenly matched (he has a full suit of armor, she has a tank top).  It does establish that she has the advantage of speed and she targets the knight’s weak spots, making her victory at least somewhat plausible, but the whole thing could have been done so much better.  Given that Marshall (and his DP, Sam McCurdy) went on to do some absolutely eye popping fight sequences for Game of Thrones, this seems especially embarrassing.  The problem is more with the editing, my opinion.  This is a great looking movie and many of the shots are beautifully composed.  It's a pity you barely get the chance to see them.

Then there are the ROAD WARRIOR sequences, which have their own issues.  It is a nice juxtaposition to see a bunch of crazy, spiked up wasteland vehicles chasing after a brand new, shiny Bentley, but if you are competing with George Miller at his own game, you are going to lose.  The bad guy’s cars look more conspicuously designed than efficiently and realistically pieced together, and there just isn’t enough creative stunt work.  There are a few nice moments, like when the Bentley drives straight through Sol’s Murderbus.  It’s an impressive endorsement for Bentley, because the car makes it through without a scratch.  Forget muscle cars and tanks, this is the baby you want to be tooling around in after the fall of civilization.  

It’s also a cute touch that Sol has his dead girlfriend propped up beside him in his car, and she keeps getting more and more accidental abuse.  It turns out to be a very misguided gesture of affection.

Even though he stumbles on the action, Marshall sticks to his horror roots and makes it nice and bloody (at least in the unrated version I have).  The squibs are super juicy, heads explode, and the virus makeup is mega gross and boily.  The wide eyed doctor from Sinclair’s team actually stops running for a second just so he can wince when a biker punk has a messy wipeout.  Overall, it is very satisfying.  

Another bright spot in the movie is Sinclair’s boss, Bill Nelson, played by Bob Hoskins.  He’s mostly just in the 28 DAYS LATER style London under siege by the infected scenes, and he plays the same guy Bob Hoskins always plays, but any Bob Hoskins is refreshing.  I love that he represents the Cockney perspective in the austere, upper crust Parliamentary briefings.  He gets to use the phrases “tits-up” and “fuck-all” in the same speech.  It’s a nice counter to Alexander Siddig’s wimpy Prime Minister Hatcher and the overtly evil Canaris.  

In the end [Spoiler], Sinclair gives Nelson the recording she made of Canaris’ boasting about letting all the poor people in London die out before offering the cure to the virus.  The implication being that Nelson will release it to cause a huge public outcry against Canaris.  Because we all know that releasing a recording of damaging statements and showing a cavalier attitude toward abuse of power will end a politician's career instantly.  Unless Canaris explains it was just “locker room talk”.

Extra crazy points for the last scene.  Sinclair has decided to stay in the Scottish Wastelands, for some reason.  She goes back to Glasgow and presents the cannibal punks with Sol’s head.  After a second to reflect, they all cheer and accept Sinclair as their new leader.  I don’t quite see her motivation for doing that, but those guys do seem like a fun bunch and they really know how to throw a barbecue, so why not?  

In keeping with the theme, though, it is a totally rip off of the end of FURY ROAD.  Wait a minute…

C Chaka   

I'm Just Saying: THE CRAZIES (2010)

Last week, I scrapped my plans to write about an apocalyptic movie in honor of a Trump presidency, since there was no way that could possibly happen.  So let me say it is purely coincidental that this week I’m writing about a bunch of insane people in the Mid-West who just might bring about the destruction of our country.  Zero connection with current events.  Honestly, I just re-watched this one during my October horror binge and remembered how great a movie it is.  I am in no way making allusions between Trump voters and the 2010 remake of THE CRAZIES.   

Other than the title.  

The Capsule:

Life is simple in the quiet town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa.  At least until some of the residents start to go a little off—doing things like zoning out, repeating themselves, and walking into a high school baseball game with a loaded shotgun.  It might have something to do with that mysterious military plane that crashed in the river, releasing a doozy of a biological weapon into the town’s drinking water.  Just as Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) starts to piece together what is happening to his formerly non-murderous neighbors, the Army descends on the entire town, putting everyone under quarantine.  Soon things get out of hand, and David, his doctor wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), her assistant, Becca (Danielle Panabaker), and Deputy Russell (Joe Anderson) decide to make a break for it.  To make it to safety, they will need to get past not only a town full of crazies, but a military containment unit whose idea of treatment is liberally applied bullets, followed by a flamethrower.

Superficial analogies aside, THE CRAZIES isn’t a democratic nightmare, it’s a libertarian one.  For the law abiding citizens of Ogden Marsh, the government is literally out to get them.  The remake is even more blatant about it than George Romero’s 1973 original.  His version focused much more on the military’s attempt to contain and even cure the Trixie virus they accidentally unleashed.  The Army in the original is similarly at odds with the survivors—the troops herd up the town’s residents and don't hesitate to put down the infected.  The motives of those in charge of the operation are notably more sympathetic, though.  The Army commander is frustrated with the logistic and bureaucratic obstacles preventing him from helping the residents.  The head scientist works (and complains) tirelessly to find a cure.  They are trying their best, and they are anguished that it is not enough.

The remake gives us none of that.  The motives of the military, and presumably the government itself, are never made clear.  Are they trying to stop a pandemic, like professional stone-faced government guy Glenn Morshower says, or are they just trying to cover up their involvement?  They are aware of what is going on, but they do not intervene until David finds the evidence that can implicate them.  It seems like an accident, but they knowingly created the virus in the first place.  Even though the plot is grade A conspiracy theory paranoia, it’s not totally unthinkable that someone would want to manage the PR impact.  The truth is going to look bad.  Wiping out a town—or all of Iowa—is not something you can just blame on an intern.

Still, things aren’t completely black and white.  With their gas masks on, the troops are a faceless, merciless mob of killers, pulling crying children from their parents’ arms.  Take the mask away, though, and they are just normal people.  The kid that David and Russell capture and interrogate knows nothing more than they do.  He’s just following orders, and he’s ashamed of it.  When David’s group lets him go, he doesn’t rat them out to his squad.  He’s trying to do right in a messed up situation.

Though the Army is the primary threat, the crazies themselves are the real highlight.  It could easily have gone in a more traditional zombie movie approach by making the infected just mindless monsters, but it takes an extra, unsettling step.  Nearly all of the crazies David's group runs into are characters briefly but memorably introduced in the first act. They are friends and neighbors.  For the most part, decent people.  That makes it even more chilling when the high school principal suddenly shows up dragging a pitchfork behind him, systematically perforating the restrained, helpless patients housed in his own auditorium.  Or, when the funeral director starts sewing up bodies that aren’t dead yet.  Even the incidental scenes have thought put into them, like when the survivors walk by a bunch of the baseball players from the opening who are methodically pounding their fists into a steel dumpster.

This Trixie virus is a real son of a bitch.  Giving it a cute name didn’t help.  Before turning its hosts into complete psychos, it distorts and subverts their personalities.  The loving husband turns on his family.  The wife and son of the man David had to shoot at the baseball game force David to watch as they try to kill Judy.  Deputy Russell is the saddest case.  While David refuses to admit they could become infected, Rus sees his inevitable fate clearly.  “I’m no world leader, but I had plans,” he laments.  Even when the sickness starts to creep in, working on his insecurities and paranoia, making him dangerous, he keeps it together.  He still wants to do the right thing.  His last act is a little bit of conciliation, at least.  He gets to sacrifice himself to help his friends. 

Of course, when the people are assholes to begin with, watch out.  The three redneck hunters who find the crashed plane’s pilot only needed the tiniest nudge from the virus to coax them into poaching people instead of deer.  When they show up briefly in the middle, with their pickup full of trophy bodies, they are treated like T-Rex Crazies, top of the crazy food chain.  Standard crazies want to kill you, these motherfuckers want to mount you on their wall.  The giant Viking looking dude with the Mohawk could be the main villain in a slasher movie just by himself, and that is before he gets all veiny and Trixie-roided out.  As intimidating as they are, the tension of the film was so relentless that I forget about them for a while.  It was a nice (and awful) surprise when they show up at the very end, silently staring at David and Judy in what they thought was a sanctuary.    

Though the story is centered in a single town, it has a bit of an apocalyptic road movie feel, like something Stephen King would write.  It moves from one self-contained scene to the next, with just a quick breather in between the tension.  The pacing is fantastically tight—no filler, but still having room for organic character development.  The big suspense scenes are staged differently enough to stand out.  While I do enjoy a good bone saw fight, the best is probably the car wash attack.  David’s group is trapped in a car as it advances down the track as the spinning brushes, water spray, and noise hide the crazies that might be around them.  It’s like the worst funhouse ride ever.

Timothy Olyphant is a man comfortable with playing a lawman.  THE CRAZIES was in between his role as hotheaded frontier sheriff Seth Bullock in Deadwood and his magnificent turn as U.S. Marshall Rayland Givens in Justified.  David Dutton is more of an “aw shucks” small town constable.  He has a smile for everyone, but nothing gets by him, and he lets people know it.  Olyphant plays him with more doubt and vulnerability than with Rayland.  It’s still a bad idea to try and outdraw him, though.  Once the shit starts to go down, David struggles to keep it together.  He gets snippy and makes mistakes, but his determination to keep his wife safe pushes him through.  

Olyphant is brilliant at conveying simmering anger just under the surface.  He explodes a few times, but mostly he just plays it with a searing glance.  It is all he can do to bite his tongue when someone is yelling something obvious to him.  His expression alone shouts “I AM trying to start the fucking car!”  There are a couple of times I was surprised the crazies didn’t just back away awkwardly, trying not make eye contact.  Best just to let that guy cool off a bit.  If Olyphant got into an intense-off with Michael Shannon, the Earth would probably crack in two.

Radha Mitchell makes is a great match for him as Judy.  Though she has her fatalistic moments, she is very feisty and doesn’t let that pesky Hippocratic oath keep her from wasting some crazy bastards when need be.  I’ve been following Michell since PITCH BLACK and I haven’t been disappointed in her choices.  She has a taste for genre work, with great turns in films like SILENT HILL and ROGUE.  There is something about her big, haunted eyes that works so well for horror and sci-fi.   

This tense, tight little nail-biter came from a land seeped in remakes.  Co-writer Scott Kosar did screenplays for THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE AMITYVILLE HORROR remakes, so I can't explain how this one came out so well (he also did THE MACHINIST, which I liked).  Director of photography Maxime Alexandre, who composed some exquisite shots in this, did cinematography on the excellent remakes of THE HILLS HAVE EYES and MANIAC.  Director Breck Eisner, has only done two other theatrical releases, neither remakes (2005’s SAHARA and 2015’s THE LAST WITCH HUNTER), though he is currently attached to the re-remake of FRIDAY THE 13^th..  That seems like a bad idea, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt based on this one.




See, this was not a political statement at all. Only talking about movies.  There is no way I am saying a shadow government exposed the Mid-West (and beyond) to a mind altering Trumpie virus that caused millions of reasonable people to make catastrophically bad decisions.  That's just...crazy?

C Chaka