Movie Review: Doomsday

Doomsday (2008) 

Directed by Neil Marshall

Written by Neil Marshall

Starring Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Adrian Lester 

Release Date March 14th, 2008

Published June 12th, 2008 

Director Neil Marshall is a talented scenarist with a flair for hardcore violence. His The Descent is one of the best horror films of the decade. For his latest effort Doomsday, Marshal tries his hand at post-apocalyptic sci fi and finds he has little new to add to this aggressive sub-genre. Though Doomsday is skilled in its violence and has a strong visual sense, the story is beyond laughable, the characters wooden and forgettable.

In some not so distant future a virus dubbed 'Reaper' has devastated much of Scotland. The blood borne, possibly airborn disease has who of the Isle terrified and left London with a damnable decision. Sentencing millions to die horrifying deaths, the government built an 18 mile wall encompassing the whole border between England and Scotland.

Years later drug enforcement cops stumble on a cache of disease victims. The reaper virus is back and another horrible decision must be made. There is however a sliver of hope. Satellites have picked up movement in Glasgow, survivors. The thought is that the legendary Dr. Kane (Malcolm McDowell may have developed a cure.

The government throws together an elite fighting force to go into the infected area, find Kane and the possible cure. Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is charged with leading this force into battle. What she finds are a loose confederacy of survivors for whom violence, human sacrifice and cannibalism are the order of the day.

The skill of Neil Marshall's direction in Doomsday is undeniable. What is lacking is any good sense in the storytelling. Doomsday unfolds in anarchic fashion but lacking a truly anarchic spirit. Marshall can't seem to decide whether he is going for the hardcore cool of 28 Days Later or the ironic, distanced, black humor of Mad Max.

What comes of Doomsday is a failed melange of the darkly comic and the attempted tragic.

Star Rhona Mitra has the physicality and good looks necessary for this role but she is at times far too sullen and lacking in the badass cool that might turn Doomsday from gloomy to just goofy enough for guilty pleasure. I wanted to revel more in her  badassery but Mitra just won't let us in. We admire her stunt work and occasionally smirk at her attempts at humor but the performance is too flat to inspire anything more than modest admiration.

If you like bizarre you may admire Neil Marshall's use of music in Doomsday. Fine Young Cannibals, Siouxie and the Banshees and Frankie Goes To Hollywood each receive prominent placement in Doomsday in some bizarre, overly ironic tribute to the 1980's.

There was potential for Doomsday to be the kind of badass action movie that combined the spirit of Big Trouble in Little China with the horror aesthete of 28 Days Later. Unfortunately, Marshall can't quite get the mix right. His visual style is impeccable but for all the attention paid to stunts and effects, the story falters and Doomsday disappoints.

Movie Review Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy (2019) 

Directed by Neil Marshall

Written by Andrew Cosby

Starring David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church 

Release Date April 12th, 2019 

Published April 11th, 2019

Do we really need a Hellboy reboot? No, no we do not. But, Hollywood does not appear to care for our opinion on this matter. Hellboy is a character that many people recognize and thus may pay money to see and regardless of the compromised state of the character and the story, his marketability is what truly matters. Hellboy has a Q-rating that rings a bell in marketing meetings among the right demographic of desirable young consumers. That’s why we have a new Hellboy.

Stranger Things breakout star, David Harbor, picks up the mantle of Hellboy, for this reboot. In this re-imaging of Hellboy, we join the story with our hero, already a member of the Paranormal Bureau of Investigation and working for his father, Professor Bloom (Ian McShane). Hellboy is out on a personal errand as we join his story, he’s traveled to Mexico to locate a friend and fellow agent who has gone missing in the world of Lucha Libre wrestling.

This is a clever and colorful way to start the movie but, sadly, it’s all downhill from here. Hellboy finds his friend and is forced to kill him when he becomes a demon bat. Before he dies, the friend warns Hellboy that the end of the world is coming. In a prologue to the story, we meet the Blood Queen (Milla Jovavich). The Blood Queen intended to bring monsters and demons out of the shadows and destroy humanity thousands of years ago before she was stopped by King Arthur and Merlin.

Now, The Blood Queen is about to make a comeback. Despite having been beheaded and having her body carved into several pieces and locked inside boxes, The Blood Queen is set to return and only Hellboy and his friends can stop her from destroying humanity. Aiding Hellboy are his long time friend Alice (Sasha Lane), a psychic with ever changing and growing powers, and Major Ben Daimio, an English secret agent who claims to hate monsters like Hellboy while harboring a monstrous secret of his own.

Together, reluctantly, they will battle The Blood Queen and several other deathly threats put forward by director Neil Marshall, a man with a known knack for quality monsters. Neil Marshall was the director of one of my favorite monster movies of recent memory, 2005’s The Descent. Where that remarkable talent has gone since then is anyone’s guess. Marshall followed up The Descent with a mediocre Mad Max knock off called Doomsday and has never again looked like the director who crafted The Descent.

Hellboy demonstrates some of the craft that Marshall was once known for but it is also lacking in many of the same ways that Marshall’s post-The Descent features are lacking. Much like Doomsday, which cribbed heavily from the worst tropes of the Mad Max movies, Hellboy feels overly familiar with an arc that is indistinguishable from any number of fantasy adventure or superhero-comic book movies. There is little to no invention in this story.

David Harbour cuts a giant figure as Hellboy but the choice to direct him as a larger, slower, version of Deadpool is perhaps the film's biggest failing. The R-Rating for Hellboy essentially gets second billing to Hellboy himself with the film using the freedom of the R-Rating to attempt to appeal to hardcore comic fans. Unfortunately, Hellboy lacks the skill and intelligence of the makers of Deadpool and there is simply no wit and not nearly enough style to the R-Rated violence in Hellboy as there was in Deadpool.

Hellboy doesn’t need an R-Rating. The violence that director Neil Marshall has employed that earns the film that rating never feels organic or necessary. The violence of Hellboy somehow fails to even induce shock and without that pinch of shock it comes off as merely gross. Hellboy comes off as childish and infantile in comparison to other R-Rated heroes such as Logan and Deadpool, and that’s saying something given the level of juvenile in Deadpool 2. In Deadpool, the hardcore violence is delivered with such style and humor that no matter what Deadpool the character does, the film feels mature. Hellboy never achieves anything similar.

Hellboy is a kid brother’s version of an R-Rated fantasy comic. It’s all flash and no style. It’s all blood and guts and no character or wit. Hellboy has all the pretension toward something edgy without ever actually becoming edgy or even controversial. Small kids might lose sleep over some of the gory images of Hellboy 2019, but anyone with fully developed sensibilities will find the film witless, charmless and infantile, especially when compared to other R-Rated comic book hero stories