Horror fans of the world unite. Neil Marshall, of The Descent directorial fame, is already hard at work on his next project. For his latest outing, Marshall is switching gears, moving away from the monster movies of his past to a post- apocalyptic thriller called Doomsday. Malcolm McDowell, who was always up for a bit of the in/out, in/out in A Clockwork Orange, and 'Nip/Tuck’s' Rhona Mitra headline the futuristic thriller, reports Scotsman.com.
In Doomsday, McDowell will play a medieval-like king in a Scotland that has been cut off from the outside world for 30 years after an outbreak of a deadly virus, caused by genetic tampering. About the time the Scots have found a cure, a new outbreak threatens England and a crack military team led by Mitra goes into the quarantined Scotland to get it.
" [Mitra] goes through from [Hadrin’s] Wall up to Glasgow and then farther north. The farther north she gets, the more back in time she goes. It's like a “Heart of Darkness” journey,” Marshall explained. “There's a Kurtz character running a feudal society and living in a castle. He used to be a scientist -- he's the guy who found the cure and he's taken on this kind of God-like stature up there."
Marshall has always been the most comfortable working within genre limitations, and Doomsday seems to be no different. It’s the combination of a dozen stories we’ve heard before -- 28 Days Later, Apocalypse Now and we perhaps we might see a dash of monster movie horror given the genetic tampering. If The Descent proves anything, it’s that is exactly where we want Marshall to be. He has the ability to weave subtle subtext into his scares, and Doomsdays sounds rife with subtext, if not a little over stuffed.
Filming began in South Africa, shooting mostly around Cape Town, but has since moved to Scotland’s Glasgow area and around Blackness Castle. Let’s hope Marshall doesn’t get lost in his themes and continues to grow as a director.
