Doomsday (18)

Starring:Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Caryn Peterson
Director:Neil Marshall
Year:2008
Duration:105 mins

Dateline: a place resembling the west end of Glasgow, 2035 – as imagined in Neil Marshall's sci-fi horror.

The good news: parking spaces are available within 10 miles of the front door. No need to pack survival rations next time you venture out on a Saturday night.

The bad news: the place is a disaster-blasted wilderness crawling with crazed wretches hungry for human flesh. Imagine what that's done to house prices.

Speculating about the effect of free-range zombies on the property market is one way to pass the time while watching Marshall's ragbag of a picture. Alternatively, you could play "spot the movie" as he pays homage to everything from Mad Max to Escape From New York, or enjoy a round of name that tune as another ancient pop track blasts out. One might also wonder why a director of Marshall's talent, as seen in Dog Soldiers and The Descent, didn't make a better job of his third feature. For a thriller, Doomsday is decidedly everyday.

At the centre of the action is Lara Croft lookalike Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra). We first meet her as a child in Glasgow, circa 2008. A deadly disease, the Reaper virus, has Scotland in its grip. Fearing its spread, London rebuilds Hadrian's Wall in concrete and steel, imprisoning Caledonia's citizens. Why the virus can't float over the border is the first of many mysteries left unaddressed by Marshall's script.

As desperate Scots lay siege to the wall, Eden's mother bags her child a seat on a departing army helicopter. Fast forward to London decades later and Eden has repaid the favour to the boys in camouflage by becoming a major. You can tell she's a no-nonsense sort of girl - not by the gun she totes but because her best pal and fellow law enforcer is Bob Hoskins (pronounced 'Oskins).

When the reaper virus resurfaces, Eden is pressed into Downing Street's service. Survivors have been spotted on the streets of Glasgow, meaning there's a chance of finding a cure. Her unit heads north to find out more.

By this point, Marshall has the perfect set-up. He's got a topical idea: a virus wreaking political and social mayhem. He's lined up a gutsy heroine who looks fab in a vest and is placing her in unknown peril. As her team enters Scotland there's a genuine sense of foreboding at what they might find. No need to worry, however: if their movie collections are up to scratch they, like the audience, will know exactly what's coming next.

Check out those marauding savages who've painted their faces Braveheart-style, the better to tear around in Mad Max vehicles. For fans of Russell Crowe there's a gladiatorial contest. Even a Lord of the Rings-type quest is chucked in.

The music at the set-piece feast - where, in another mystery, a certain brand of lager is still available to the natives - is from the eighties.

Doomsday is not so much 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later - it's 20 Years Ago. When Marshall does push the boundaries, as in a scene where a character is strung up and beaten, you wish he'd put on another tune instead of dabbling in the current fashion for torture porn.

Though much of the movie was shot in South Africa, locals will have some fun spotting the domestic locations. But even the minor thrill to be had from hearing Queen Street Station namechecked in a blockbuster is not enough to make up for undercooked dialogue, a story that's all over the shop and clunky, juvenile humour.

If you're the sensitive type that doesn't appreciate Scots being painted as savages, there's much here to offend. "Whoever they send here we're going to catch 'em, we're going to cook 'em, and we're going to eat 'em!" screams their beetroot-faced psycho of a leader. Why not deep-fry 'em? It may be a post-apocalyptic basket case of a country (then, not now), but we still have our traditions.

In his previous films, Marshall made something out of nothing. Here he does the opposite. He's got decent actors in David O'Hara (The Departed), playing the Iago of Number Ten, and trusty old 'Oskins, yet he does little to stretch their characters beyond the obvious. Like Mitra, they get lost in the mayhem. Malcolm McDowell is wasted in a bizarre segue into medievalism that looks like it's from another movie entirely.

Horror fans are partial to a homage here and there, in-jokes and a generally B-movie approach, but there has to be something more - grit, originality, humour blacker than the ring round Satan's bathtub.

Marshall hasn't produced enough of any of these here. Going by the way the door is left open at the end, he believes a sequel is worth a punt. With this one barely surviving judgment day, he's got a better chance of parking an 18-wheeler in the west end.

After his sensational breakthrough with Dog Soldiers, and his triumph with The Descent, this is the cinematic equivalent of the difficult third album for director Neil Marshall.

And like many third albums, there are things to admire but generally speaking they collapse under the weight of their own ambition and pretension – Doomsday is no different.

With Dog Soldiers, and especially The Descent, Marshall established himself as being very handy at doing claustrophobic horror with a touch of bitter humour thrown in.

Doomsday takes him down the well-travelled route of post-apocalyptic horror in a film that should call to mind Resident Evil or 28 Days Later, but actually reminded me of the much less successful Reign of Fire.

In this post apocalyptic world, Britain is divided by a wall just below Marshall’s native Newcastle. After years of being written off politically Scotland and the North of England now have to deal with it literally.

The reason for this isolation is the deadly Reaper virus – which led to this quarantine zone being established 25 years before the action is set. Now a new strain of the lethal disease has appeared and London is under threat.

Tough soldier Rhona Mitra and her team are despatched to the north to try to find an antidote in a community of survivors. What she finds is a feral community founded on cannibalism – and her team are the tastiest meal they’ve seen in ages.

Doomsday is a fairly conventional action thriller and as such it falls down on a number of levels. The first is that, apart from the obvious attributes which lead to her being Lara Croft’s body double, there is little else of interest about Rhona Mitra for anyone over fourteen.

Her performance is dull and wooden and no amount of scenery chewing from the likes of Bob Hoskins or Malcolm McDowell can compensate for that. Likewise, the decent cast can do very little to save a dull script that leaps about from scene to scene like a thing demented.

On the plus side, those scenes that were shot in Glasgow blend seamlessly with the rest of the film and that can only be good for the city’s film industry.