If you’re like me, you occasionally find yourself in the mood to watch more than one movie. Everything sounds good. You’d like a nice dose of action, some horror, some car chases, a few Medieval adventures, maybe some Tolkien-style fantasy, and a little sci-fi to boot. What can you do to scratch  that itch?

Apparently, that’s the question that director Neil Marshall was attempting to answer when he made Doomsday. I was sort of looking forward to it; although it was clearly a take on Escape from New York, I thought maybe Marshall would have something fun to add. After all, his previous effort, The Descent, was very good - I caught it on a double bill with Snakes on a Plane at my school’s second-run theater, and I can honestly say that it ended up being better than the main feature. I was surprised by some of the warm-hearted humor and character development that found its way into what was, essentially, a classic “trapped in a cave” horror movie. Not to mention that, unlike far too many “horror” movies nowadays, it was genuinely scary. Whether you’re afraid of the dark or the monsters who reside in it, The Descent will push your buttons.

Doomsday, not so much.

Doomsday is kind of what happens when you attempt to combine 28 Days Later, Escape from New York, Mad Max, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Roger Moore era James Bond, and a lot of tiny elements nabbed from other stories. I can’t honestly point out one single facet of Doomsday that was not copied from something else. Whether intentionally or not, this movie is 100% unoriginal.

Firstly, the plot revolves around what is basically a rage virus. Considering how much media has relied on the existence of such a virus, I find it odd that there’s basically no such thing in existence anywhere. I guess rabies comes close, but when did you last hear about a rabies outbreak? If rabies really is to blame for decades of crappy sci-fi plots, I’d like to speak to its manager RIGHT NOW.

Secondly, a major facet of the plot involves a team of brave soldiers who venture into quarantine to find a cure for this virus. Naturally, within the walls, there exists a civilization of animalistic cyber-punk cannibals who ride around on bikes with skulls attached, and such. They’re sort of like Reavers, except they talk and have impressive facial tattoos.

Thirdly, once Rhona Mitra and her soldiers have infiltrated the society, they discover this pseudo-Medieval group, led by a tyrannical ex-doctor played by Malcolm McDowell. There are a lot of horses and suits of armor and wide sweeping shots of what is possibly New Zealand.

Then there is a magnificent deus ex machina in the form of a sports car, of all things, and suddenly we’re in a stylish car chase on mountain roads. Remember, this is all the same movie.

When Guillermo del Toro decided to mesh the comic-book Lovecraftian stylings of Hellboy with an elaborate steampunk fantasy world in Hellboy II, I was behind him all the way. It turned out great, because he knew just how to mesh the stories together - that is, not in a bunch of mostly-unrelated chunks that make you feel like you’re watching a different movie every fifteen minutes.

The most irritating part of Doomsday is probably Rhona Mitra’s bionic eye, which is capable of recording everything it sees. So, of course it will be used to take down a bad guy - who, surprisingly enough, is an upstanding citizen in a three-piece suit. Not the psychopathic cannibal leader who tortures and kills indiscriminately. If you’re a geek like me, you might have a vague memory of something very much like Rhona’s bionic eye being in an Orson Scott Card novel once. Well you can put that thought right out of your head, because there is NO WAY that Marshall would have let his plot hinge on a stolen device.

Oh, wait.

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