The Movie:

Perhaps Doomsday was a bad movie to start with. It had all the trimmings of one. With its campy, post apocalyptic story, the genre film was already a target of studio scrutiny. When Neil Marshall showed Universal his disjointed director’s cut the studio probably hit the panic button. The solution, gut the film so that it fits a running time of under a hundred minutes. The result is a product that can cram a large audience into theaters over opening weekend, but what they will ultimately find is one of the worst movies of this, or any year.

1/10

Click Here to Read the Full Theatrical Review!

Special Features:

While I may have cried foul upon seeing the Doomsday theatrical cut a few months back, I reserved hope that an Unrated Director’s Cut would eventually see the light of day. Sure enough, the DVD release of Doomsday includes both the theatrical and Unrated versions of the film.

The special features on the DVD are rather limited, not surprising for a picture that made back only a third of its production budget. While most of the featurettes and the commentary are rather self-explanatory, perhaps the most intriguing is “Visual Effects”. Delving into how the talented special effects teams made a disgustingly gory epic for a fraction of the usually bloated price should tantalize aspiring filmmakers everywhere.

Of course the real story is the Unrated cut. While it may not have the director’s stamp, does it redeem the picture from damnation? Not entirely. While there is certainly a plethora of additional gore, as far as furthering the dynamics of the story goes, there isn’t very much more than what was in the theatrical cut. Unfortunately for fans of Neil Marshall, they will just have to bite the bullet and accept that the cult favorite is capable of misfiring.

5/10

Overall:

One of the most disjointedly bad movies out there comes home with an expectedly average DVD. While the additional gore in the Unrated cut might redeem the film in some audiences eyes, the rest of us can perhaps hope that there is still a Director’s Cut floating in the Universal vaults…..

-Joe Russo