There’s no way to enjoy watching someone so obviously talented fall flat on their face; with Doomsday, writer-director Neil Marshall comes down after a staggering trip following two pieces of modern horror genius: Dog Soldiers and The Descent. In this case I can understand the appeal after all, the story has all the ingredients to be bawler of a picture for a key demographic: the youngins. Unfortunately, they may be stupid enough to fall for it, and unfortunately for me I wasn’t able to. This movie is profoundly messed up and I don’t mean that in the good way when referencing a horror movie.

Taking place in a futuristic England, 25 years after a deadly plague force the government of the UK to wall off Scotland from the world, Doomsday treads some very familiar ground. When the virus reappears in downtown London, the government dispatches a crack team to penetrate the Scottish border, find a group of known survivors and locate the man they believe to have cured them. Naturally, things go horribly wrong when the team is ambushed in Glasgow. Future Scottish society, it seems, will be split into two separate, but equally important groups: the goth-punks that rule the cities and the medieval kingdom that controls the rural areas.

So, Doomsday’s a good title, but I think that Resident Mad Max Cannibal Holocaust of the Rings 28 Weeks Later would be better, though a little wordy. There are times that the movie feels like it could have been made by anybody who had ever been to a cinema, let alone a highly talented filmmaker like Marshall. From the Road Warrior antics to the bizarre Medieval Times Dinner and Tournamentmeets Gladiator interlude, Doomsday looks more like a You Tube trailer mash than a movie; even the leading lady seems like a pale imitation.

But for some strange reason the movie actually started out as good, oddly compelling even; I wasn’t sure where it was going but it had to be someplace good. Marshall makes a critical error in that he compounds the insanities one on top of the other under the presumption that since we’re here, we’ll just go along with it. It could be the creepy cybernetic eye of Rhonda Mitra’s character or the usual faceless drones that make up the marine and medical team of coffin-stuffers (or is that barbecue?), but frankly I think the film goes off the rails with the goth-cannibal-punks, Lord of the Dance strip show in kilts.

And oh, my poor head! The logic of this thing boggles my mind. Generally if I want to be this confused I’ll read Doc Jensen’s Lost column at ew.com and try to wrap my head around all the suggested literary allusions. Like how does a newly opened cellphone work in a post-apocalyptic waste land without a SIM card? Why would the British government hide a blue 2008 Bentley Continental GT with a full tank of gas, in a military bunker, while in the midst of a pandemic crisis? I’ll spare you the general psychosis of the ending except to say that if you made it that far without being offended, you’ll definitely be thinking twice.

Having said all that though, Marshall directs the action well and creates some genuinely adrenaline filled sequences… that is if I didn’t all ready seem them in every Mad Max made by George Miller to date. Usually this kind of blatant rip off is saved for utilization by our old friend Paul W.S. Anderson, who loves nothing more than stealing other people’s material when adapting other people’s material. Maybe Marshall thought it was homage, I don’t know, but ich bin unimpressed.