Blu-ray Movie Reviews

From the director of The Descent comes an action-packed thrill-ride through the beating heart of hell! To save humanity from an epidemic, an elite fighting unit must battle to find a cure in a post-apocalyptic zone controlled by a society of murderous renegades. Loaded with ferocious fights and high-octane chases, Doomsday grabs you right from the start, and doesn't let go till its explosive end!

Director Neil Marshall’s last film, The Descent, was quite the surprise for me. I managed to see it before its premiere on our shores and I loved the originality and sheer terror of it. This new film isn’t quite as groundbreaking and delivers a fusion of post apocalyptic scenarios with a blending of Mad Max, Robin Hood and 28 days Later. In the end you get a blood soaked action film that delivers in thrills but comes up a bit short in captivating storyline. But I still had a good time.

This is the first day-and-date title for Universal on Blu-ray and if it’s any indication of the quality we can expect from Universal on new titles, we’re in for a treat. Doomsday looks incredible on Blu-ray with razor sharp imagery, outstanding detail and incredible contrast. The image has incredible depth and dimension and fine detail is prevalent throughout the entire film. Some of the visual effects standout a bit more than they should but this is a limitation of the production. Everything else here is top notch. Color rendition is very natural and instead of trying to make this film look like everything else out there the director stuck with a very natural looking visual presentation. Overall this is a top shelf video presentation and a great entrance for Universal into the format.

The soundtrack is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and provides a compelling mix of sound design and score. Dynamics are quite intense with some impressive low end nuances bring a lot to the intensity of the film. Surrounds are used aggressively for both environment and to add to the action. Dialogue is balanced well within the mix but there were a few instances that the score drowned out some of the dialogue a bit more than I would have preferred. Panning across the main channels was completely seamless and the soundtrack has a very spatial quality that doesn’t feel tied down to any one speaker.

Extras aren’t quite as intensive as the other Universal releases so far but the U-Control features are quite good. They include intelligence on the characters during the film along with tech specs for a lot of the vehicles and weapons used throughout. There is also a picture-in-picture production feature that shows you the same scenes during the production while you’re watching the film. Universal has also included a feature commentary with the director and cast members.

While this film got mixed reviews during its theatrical run I found it enjoyable for the most part. Universal has delivered a dynamite A/V presentation and I hope this is a sign of what to expect from their new releases with Blu-ray going forward.