Editorials
In Defense Of ‘Doomsday’ (‘Mad Max’ Edition!)
Welcome to another installment of Bloody-Disgusting’s “In Defense Of” series! Since Mad Mad: Fury Road (Review #1, Review #2) came out this weekend, we thought we’d take a look at Neil Marshall’s little-seen post-apocalyptic film Doomsday. Released in 2008, Doomsday earned a mere $22.2 million worldwide on a reported $20 million budget, making it a commercial failure. Critically, the film didn’t fare much better.With a 50% on the TomatoMeter (based on 68 reviews) and a 51 MetaScore (based on 14 reviews), it certainly divided people. It’s actually quite a fun movie if you give it a chance, and we’re here to tell you why!
The plot is fairly straightforward: in 2008, a virus (nicknamed the Reaper Virus) infects the majority of Scotland’s population. To prevent it from spreading outside of the country, the UK government quarantines the entire area by building a wall around it and destroying all airports, bridges and docks. Flash forward to 2035 and the virus has reappeared in London. The British Prime Minister sends a team back into Scotland to find Dr. Kane (Malcolm McDowell), who was trying to find a cure back in 2008. The team is led by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), a one-eyed survivor of the Scotland incident.
The biggest gripe people seem to have with Doomsday is that it is clearly a blatant ripoff of several (better) films. Marshall himself has stated that he intended to be an homage to the following films: The original Mad Max Trilogy, Escape From New York, Excalibur, The Warriors, No Blade of Grass, The Omega Man, A Boy and His Dog, Waterworld and Gladiator. That….is a lot.
It’s understandable that that would be a lot to take in for some people, and for the younger crowd who has never seen any of those movies (I myself have only seen about half of them), Doomsday might actually seem like a completely original film. Unfortunately it’s not, but Marshall’s intent was to homage all of the previously listed film. That being said, homaging so many different films mean that Doomsday doesn’t really have its own identity.
It does have a fantastic sense of weirdness to it, though. Just look at this scene:
That is fucking weird, but I’m kind of in love with it. Doomsday prides itself on being weird. It morphs from a viral outbreak movie to a military ops film to a medieval war film to a Mad Max sequel. It’s bonkers in the best way, but I’m fully aware I’m in the minority with that sentiment.
In terms of the acting, everyone on screen does their part. Rhona Mitra is the only standout, and while Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell are in the film, they don’t really register with their limited amount of screen time. Apparently Marshall had wanted Mitra to become an action star, but unfortunately that did not transpire. I’ve always really liked her and feel bummed that her acting career never really took off. Not that she hasn’t had steady work, but she’s not exactly what I would call “famous,” unless you watch The Last Ship.
The gore in the film is top notch as well. There are beheadings, burnings, heads exploding, a grotesque scene of cannibalism and so much more. Apparently, Marshall saw Children of Men while he was filming Doomsday and, since the films are a bit similar in plot, he decided he wanted to make his film more bloody and more fun. Now Children of Men is clearly a better film, but Marshall definitely succeeded in making Doomsday bloody and fun. Is it good? Maybe, maybe not. but it accomplishes what it sets out to do.
While Doomsday is far from perfect (or even great), there are certainly worse ways to spend a Friday night. Sure, it’s a jumbled mishmash of genres and tones. It doesn’t always work, but when it does it really does. Give this one a second (or first) chance. You might find yourself actually enjoying it!
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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