The lethal Reaper virus spreads throughout Britain—infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands. Authorities brutally and successfully quarantine the country but, three decades later, the virus resurfaces in a major city. An elite group of specialists is urgently dispatched into the still-quarantined country to retrieve a cure by any means necessary. Shut off from the rest of the world, the unit must battle through a landscape that has become a waking nightmare.
Most fantasy-action films blow their budgets in the first half-hour, and limp home with their makeup smeared. Doomsday is unusually patient, smartly saving most of its fireworks for the later innings.
– David Hiltbrand,
Philadelphia Inquirer,
18 Mar 2008
rotten:
I still believe with all my heart that no movie with real car stunts, a tough-chick hero, and a severed head that thunks directly into the camera can be all bad. But this is pushing it.
– Jim Ridley,
Village Voice,
18 Mar 2008
rotten:
[Director] Marshall cribs whole sections from other movies (Aliens and The Road Warrior, most blatantly) so baldly that you have to wonder how he'd like it if someone ripped off The Descent this egregiously.
– Gregory Kirschling,
Entertainment Weekly,
19 Mar 2008
rotten:
Marshall's mash note to '80s postapocalyptic action-adventures re-creates the era's trashy pleasures with such scrupulous fidelity -- and distinct lack of irony -- that you'd swear the movie was unearthed from the ruins of a Times Square grind house.
– David Fear,
Time Out New York,
29 Jul 2010
fresh:
Marshall's adrenalin-fuelled skill and enthusiasm propel the action forward with reckless abandon.