MovieChat Forums > 2012: Doomsday (2008) Discussion > 2012 Doomsday - Jesus Wept

2012 Doomsday - Jesus Wept


I feel it is my duty to write a lengthy review of this steaming pile of horse manure. If I can prevent a single person from the certain coma-inducing zombie state this movie is sure to cause, I shall have done my bit for society.


The assault on the senses begins with a dramatic, definitely-not-John-Williams score while somebody in a rubber ducky travels down a river that isn't the Amazon holding a definitely-not-stable handycam. We are then introduced to the clearly budget-busting teletype-on-screen warning that there remain a scant 36 hours of sanity before this movie ends.


Enter the pudgy almost-hero of the film. An archeo-micro-biolo-something-ist with religious skills. Cut to the view of the volcano on which some poor sod has had to light a large fire and fan the flames. Enter the earthquakes which are reminiscent of early Star Trek episodes where everybody rocked back and forth, except far more poorly executed (that, incidentally, being what they should do to the creators of this film). The spectacular earthquakes appear to have opened a vault of some kind, somewhere in Mexico. The "scientists" then enter the styrofoam-walled chamber to find a wooden crucifix spray-painted gold. Nobody seems to notice the ominous wind as our fat almost-hero removes said relic from the unadorned chamber (which we are led to believe is Mayan but really looks like some castle dungeon from a Monty Python movie). Finally, we're treated to some special effects as the ant-hill five kilometers away explodes into a blaze of fury. Well, almost. The rift between science and religion is clearly demonstrated as debris, entirely impossible from the trajectory shown, starts raining down on our scientist troupe 5km away. We are treated to our first excitement when the token Mexican guy - sadly the only person with any acting talent in the entire movie - is crushed by a rock landing at least 3 meters in front of him.


Cut to teletyped Baltimore, only another 28 hours of agony to go. We find ourselves at the U.S. Geological Survey Center. A mouthful, I know, but the Battlestar Galactica inspired camera work more than makes up for it. We find ourselves in the heart of the Geological Survey Center. A downtown plumbing contractors office, hired specifically for this movie. A sea of worried faces (I count four) at the Center, looking as if somebody just bust up the coffee machine. The panic is palpable on the stone-carved faces. Or something like that. We are greeted with our next sterling hero. Again our conflict between science and religion with one of the best lines in the movie... "Seismic activity has increased exponentially over the last 24 hours and that increase is growing steadily." I think I just lost a few million brain cells. Aaargh. Finally the "scientific" premise of the movie. Our hapless solar system has aligned with the black hole at the center of the galaxy. We are required to forget that anything on the periphery of a sphere, circle, or spiral is always aligned with whatever finds itself in the center (clearly spatial intuition isn't required for script-writing). Fortunately one of the bright NASA scientists points out it isn't possible and that "NASA has known about these alignments for decades". Fortunately someone there figured it out while spinning a ball around a stick or something. We're given some talk about calculations and theories and stuff, even though it's clear that basic algebra is far beyond their grasp.


Oops, next jump. Back to Mexico - another 27 hours to go (my hands are hurting). Enter the blonde jogger to the theme of ritualistic Mayan nose-picking music. Enter the creepy pervert photographer who opportunistically snaps pictures of our blonde heroin. Oops, I mean heroine. Heroin is what the photographer guy was smoking when he signed up to be in this movie. Our guy introduces himself, he's a photo-journalist! Cue the tepid christian verbal foreplay which leaves sufficient time to run to the bathroom to liberate the churning contents of one's stomach. She needs a doctor and has been looking for one for two weeks, hence her hurried jog into the town at the start of this particularly assaulting scene. She turns out to be a missionary and he's actually an ex-med-school guy. The hapless village this woman is visiting is ill; likely due to the excess of personality our heroine displays.


More teletype. This time it's San Diego. Advance your watches an hour. A feeling of dread washes over you. It's twelve minutes into the movie and you're starting to get a sense of doom. We are greeted with a serious woman drawing pseudo-religious cube arrangements. She's drawn seven of them, and frustrated throws another crumbled one to the floor. Her lack of artistic output belies her obsessive-compulsive desire to violate innocent paper. The phone rings and next we're at the scene of an accident or something. Apparently paramedics respond to emergencies from home, because the call was for a drive-by shooting. Oh golly gosh - a frequent exclamation in the movie - the Mayan victim of gang warfare has a tattoo of the drawing our dilettante was trying to produce. How ominous... He dies. But not before we're treated to some gratuitous boob shot of a fat pink-sweatered woman in the background.


Oh ffs, another jump. Mexico, 25 frikken hours. Our Scientist uses a tricorder to scan the spray-painted crucifix. It's carbon dated to 300 - 600 AD. Which, if creationist scientists are on the money about carbon dating dinosaurs, means that it was made last week. At least now we know that the find of the crucifix means that the European conquerors - oops, I mean friendly visitors - were in South America long before Columbus.


Aargh, Baltimore again. Can't they advance more than one hour at a time? Surely it takes longer for the crew to get from Mexico to Baltimore than that? My left arm has started going numb. The fellows at the Geocenter have created a detailed model on a website. Our lead researcher has programmed the artificial intelligence, no blinkenlights anywhere to be seen. Science is not this man's forte because he stumbles over his lines like a drunk in an alley. The entire west coast must be evacuated because when the earth stops rotating, all the water is obviously going to head east.


Two more jumps. We find out that the missionary's father is the geoscientist. Yawn. Next we're treated to a lesson in advanced metaphysics by an ambulance man. Deep, mystical stuff with our pictorially inspired paramedic woman acting as the simulated voice of reason. I feel closer to god after that speech, partially due to the bottle of pills I just ingested.


More science. The crucifix has to go to Chichen Itza, the connection between Christianity and the Mayan religion unexplained. The ambulance people almost hit a fault-line and then we're off to the Amazon jungle to view a school/herd/hive of ants doing what ants do. We finally discover the reason the village is sick. The fish in the river are very warm and are all dead. The villagers have been poisoned by warm fish! Our med-school dropout hypothesises that it's the volcano up-river. Volcano-warmed dead fish poisoning.


Onwards to the command center. Travesty across the world. These people know how to list countries. We're finally at 19 hours where we meet the artist's mother. A clearly deranged fundamentalist with possible ties to Ted Haggard. Back to Mexico, I'm getting dizzy. The village is deserted, possibly due to the rapture or possibly another gay meth scandal and a priest. We start seeing the message this torture is proposing. Something about god, destiny, and fate. It's the apocalypse, the end of days. I couldn't agree more.


Bizarre weather calamities strike mother earth. Shredded-paper snow and tree-immobilising wind buffet San Diego. People flee the city in droves. A convoy of five cars escape the city, our paramedic hero follows behind. Mother and daughter pause to talk about god. I pray that she'll kick the old bitch out of the door but to no avail. Cue the "God loves you" and "Something wonderful is happening" speech. Cut to more camera shaking for our intrepid, cross-bearing almost-heros. A self-sacrificing fat guy sacrifices his life for no reason whatsoever by plummeting down a fault line.


A new character appears. A pregnant Mayan woman. Oh-oh. I sense a set up. We're treated to a six minute diatribe about prophecy, more god, and more ants. I desperately try to block the bleeding from my left ear. The pregnant woman is handed a pillow because it'll help. Recent scientific evidence shows that pillows are crucial assistance during traumatic child birth. Our jogger woman has an intuition that the pregnant woman must go to Chichen Itza, putting a perfectly innocent woman's life and child at risk. God told her to do it.


Cue the heart-warming reminiscing, the regrets, the apologies. The fat guy has just died but our scientist husband and wife (don't tell me you didn't see that coming) find time to have a little snog. More god talk between mother and daughter. The mother states her belief in god because she can see the light in the sky and the birds and the bees. Her sense of wonder quieted by her lack of interest. We're treated to a litany of christian catch phrases: miracles, gifts, and how god creates babies inside of people, spermatozoa notwithstanding.


Next we find out that the pregnant woman is a bona-fide virgin. The virgin mother thing rings a bell but perhaps there's a stronger connection between virgins and Chichen Itza. I'm rooting for ritual sacrifice.


We're subjected to a traumatic plane trip for the father desperately trying to join his daughter at Chichen Itza. God's anger is palpable and his wrath rains naturally occurring events down upon the plane. My will to live is fading and we still have 3 hours to go. Perhaps I should listen to the pilot and "trust in god". It might all be over soon.


We're counting down to doomsday and our artistic ambulance woman's mother disappears into thin air on a barren, deserted road. There is a god. The arty medic meets the geoscientist math-whiz in a bizarre twist of fate where they figure out that god has locked their fates together. She gets into the car blindly accepting that her mother has been called up to the big party in the sky. It appears we stand on the threshold of a convergence event; an extra-worldly calling by the Christian god to a Mayan temple - accompanied by moody ambience muzak.


Finally, something is happening. Hail the size of golf-balls plummets from the sky. One stone shatters through the window, striking the pervert photographer/med-school drop-out in the chest; the undamaged, undented car only highlighting that it was the will of god that he die an agonising, extended, prolonged, drawn-out, dramatic, painful, and unconvincing death. Fifteen minutes to go and the archeo-geo-spatio-guy has found a switch conveniently matching the crucifix.


One more bloody hour. The stabbing pain in my chest has spread to my limbs and forehead. Our archeologist guy deciphers the completely-unlike-Mayan-pictographic-runes. Our struggling super-pregnant virgin stumbles into the temple, her water holding back like the Red sea for Moses, pillow nowhere to be seen. Next the father and artist chick arrive. The convergence is complete. God has clearly called these five to a pagan temple for some divine purpose that completely escapes us. A scream, a tremor, an earthquake. Bad CGI scenes from around the world. Massive destruction as the lights around the world fade, along with the light of the sun.


Our intrepid heroes give thanks, assuming that almighty god has brought them together in a pagan styrofoam temple for an unknown purpose through an entirely improbable sequence of random events. They have been chosen, these five, as messengers of god. As the movie ends, we are filled with a sense of the apocalypse never before conveyed in a film. Massive numbers of brain cells have been raptured.

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But is it any good????

Seriously, there is a thin line between genius and insanity, I am so glad you have not crossed it.

Your post made me laugh, and for that I thank you. However as will be the case with many I shall now start the film just to see.

Wish me luck!

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LOL - great review! Although, to be honest, the movie may be one of the subtlest comedies I have ever seen. Oh, well.

I'm thinking the movie is a win-win - if the people backing it wanted to make fun of christian fundamentalists, they certainly succeeded (and it was worth every penny). If they were that themselves, then well...figure it out for yourselves.

Cheers!

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Thank you, oh thank you, a 1,000 x thank you for this absolutely wonderful, spot-on, tear jerking (from laughter) review of this heinously, well ... heinous, movie. "Faith Films Presents" should have been a tip-off, but I wanted to see the tidal wave shown on the box cover. Whatta price I had to pay. Having a root canal without anesthetic would have been less painful.

Folks, take this writer at his/her word - it's a flawless review.

Cheers, A/

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Aaah dude, your review is so friggin great, thanks for the laughs! I nearly pissed me laughing...

I accidentially watched this movie - acutally I wanted to see the new Doomsday from Neil Marshall - but your review almost makes up for all the puke I covered my keyboard and monitor with...

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?

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Best review ever! LMAO!! I might just print it so I can read it again when I watch the movie because I don't think I can stomach this film on it's own. :D

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wonderfull. i cried liters of tears watching this movie and reading your review. actually i just set up my imdb account to tell you how much i thank you for your great review

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They dont come much worse than this, acting is non existent, plot has more holes than swiss cheese, script written by a two year old, and the special effects, well they're not very special. Totally agree with your review gloggy, this is one great big turkey, and ranks alongside Terry Cunningham's 2005 Descent as one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few!!!

Check out my website Dr Geoff's Horror House

www.drgeoff.eu

"from classic silent to sick zombie gorefest, this site contains info, audio, pics and video on all your fave horror films"

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::If I can prevent a single person from the certain coma-inducing zombie state this movie is sure to cause, I shall have done my bit for society.::

Consider your bit done. This is the best review I've read this year and has definitely convinced me not to watch it.

Hi-frickin-larious!

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Hehe that was a great review i was just about to start watching but i thought id check it out on imdb first was reading another thread an your review got metioned it is one of the best reviews i have ever read!! an im so glad i havnt wasted hours out of my life having to decide it was crap myself... so thank you :o)

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I think its worth noting that the photographer got hit by the hail even though he was swerving to miss it. Also was the paramedics mother a muppet or chuckys grandma?

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Amazing review : )

I was also looking for the "real" Doomsday movie when i found this one. But i only managed to watch a few minutes before i turned it of.

And what about this talk its a "Christian movie"? Is that true? Never heard of any such thing before.

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Of course it's a Christian movie - faithfilms.cc

what a piece of trash. What does Christianity have to do with the Mayans?

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