The film also isn’t sure what type of film it wants to be. Despite the fact that it’s a genre mash-up of sorts, it also aims to be both realistic and over-the-top at the same time. It asks the questions, what if? What if there was an actual virus outbreak and quarantine of an entire country occurred? And it’s an interesting question to ask, one which you would hope is tackled in as fitting a way possible. However it’s too ridiculous and over the top to be taken even remotely seriously so its ideals are kind of confused. There’s some fun to be had in those scenes, most of that from the scenes involving Marshall’s aforementioned skill at using gore, and there are a whole series of wild and wonderfully different characters to watch as the hectic mayhem ensues.
A lot of what made Marshall’s The Descent so effective was its sense of intimacy with the characters. You actually cared about them in that film, caring what becomes of them by film’s end. Here the film doesn’t even have a whiff of that, despite an attempt by having the main character’s secret, true motive something to do with the mother she lost when she was a child, and it sacrifices that for dumb and ridiculous fight scenes and seizure-inducing editing. Although the action and more specifically the chase scenes are exciting in the basic sense that there’s the quick editing and an overbearing soundtrack, it’s nothing we haven’t seen a million times before.
Doomsday is loud and extremely in-your-face, the equivalent of the type of person who is the centre of attention at a party, performing tricks and telling jokes. The film is no better or no worse than the tons of other ones like it; it does nothing to make this “a must see”, it has none of the heart that the director’s previous work had and the dose of ridiculousness is far too high.
![The Descent (Original Unrated Cut) [Widescreen Edition]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NPJ7WYSTL._SL120_.jpg)
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