DOOMSDAY/COMING OR NOT?

It’s off to the future for Neil Marshall, for his third adventure into scaring people. To date he has worked on far more conventional terrain, squeezing unforeseen terror out of ordinary things.

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First, there was life in the army, in Dog Soldiers, then he was down a Welsh cave and found it scary in The Descent.

In Doomsday, he enters more conventional horror territory with the world, or at least Britain, under threat from a lethal virus.

Conventional? This verges on the downright hackneyed. So Marshall has to get a few twists in early to keep the story alive.

His wrinkle? Posit a Britain where the first virus was contained by locking up the infected in a remote quarter, only for the damn bug to pop up again 30 years later, forcing would be heroes led by London’s Rhona Mitra into the wretched, isolated ruins to look for a cure.

Needless to say, the visitors are not exactly welcomed with open arms by the remnants of those who were locked up 3 decades earlier.

Yes, the future can be every bit as frightening as army life or below ground, it seems.

Doomsday opens nationwide on Friday, May 9, 2008.

Posted May 5, 2008.