Doomed for a boring night if you watch this! (Doomed (DVD))

Member Name: beanie85

Product:	Doomed (DVD)
Date:	20/09/08 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: I got it for £1 . . cheaper than renting a film

Disadvantages: Bad acting, bad story, bad special effects

When I was in Tesco recently, I had a look around their 'bargain' dvd section. Since a lot of the DVDs were only £1, I couldn't resist buying a few! This film 'Doomed' was one of the ones I bought.

I had never heard of this film before I saw in Tesco and as far as I know it was a straight to dvd release.

On the front of the cover of the DVD, there is the statement "In the tradition of '28 Days Later' and 'Dawn Of The Dead'" I guess that the statement is trying to lure you in to thinking that the film is going to be wonderful and an 'almost blockbuster' release..
I quite liked both of those films, and I have to say the only comparison that I make between this film and them is that there are zombies in it. I don't think that this film should even be compared to two very good films.

On the front cover there is also a picture of a handprint in blood, which a picture of a zombie in it, and then some of the people from the film trying to look menacing.
There is the films tag line next to the picture

"5 Teams..
3 Days...
1 Objective...
To Stay Alive"

From the front cover of the film, I knew that this was going to be quite a low budget movie but I thought that it had some promise.

Something that I also found quite amusing about the dvd case was that there is a '15' certificate on the box (on both the front and the back), and then says 'Suitable only for persons of 18 years and over' under one of the '15' certificate symbols. I don't quite think they checked over all their details before publishing the cover case. I had a look on Amazon though, and it is listed as an '18' there.
The disc is just a plain white disc with 'Doomed' printed on it in black letters. There are only three options to choose from on the dvd menu. 'Play Movie', 'Chapters' or 'Trailer'.

'Play Movie' obviously just starts the film when you click on it.
If you click on 'Chapters' you can choose to jump to a certain section of the film, if you want to. There are 12 chapters all together. This is quite handy if you stop watching the film and start watching it again, you can just jump to the section you were at before.
'Trailer' is just a trailer of the film (though by the time you have bought the film I guess its too late to watch the trailer!)

The story takes place on a remote island in the 2020s. There are 10 contestants split into 5 teams, so everyone has a partner. Each of these teams wears a colour coded t-shirt so it is easy to tell who is partnered with who (good job since all the characters are quite unmemorable, so I would have gotten confused!)

We find out, via a hologram that appears on the beach where they are gathered, that the contest is for a tv show. There are no rules in this game and they just have to go from one side of the island to the other and try to stay alive. There is a large cash prize to whichever team manages this!

I was quite confused at the start of the film since two of the contestants started fighting each other for no apparent reason, and then they just kill each other. This happens in the first couple of minutes of the film and it seemed quite out of place since there didn't seem any conflict between any of the contestants before then. I guess it gets two of the ten contestants out of the way early on.

From then on the teams split up in to their individual partnerships and set off down different paths. They need to search for their own food and weapons, but there are several hidden boxes with weapons and water in them around the island.

Something that really annoyed me whilst watching this film was that if someone hit someone, or fought someone, little points would flash up on the screen and the name of the 'type' of kick or punch. I know it was meant to make it seem more like a tv show, but it didn't, and it was just annoying since it happened a lot.

The teams suddenly start realising that they are not alone on the island when a group of zombie soldiers start attacking them. Will they manage to hold out for three days on the island or will the zombies get to them instead? Or.. will they all keep fighting amongst themselves and kill each other that way? I'm not going to recommend you watch the film to find out.. but I'm not going to tell you the ending either!

At the end of each day, the hologram host appears at the edge of the screen and gives a run down of the days events to the viewers. Who has been killed, where people are, what chances each of the teams have of surviving. I found this host quite annoying. I suppose that the film makers have tried to be quite clever and make it seem as if you are actually a watcher of the tv program, but it wasn't very well done and seemed a bit tacky and had bad computer graphics too.

I didn't like any of the characters in the film and therefore could not sympathise or relate to them very well. They all seemed to be really nasty, argumentative, shallow people who have no hang ups about killing any of their fellow contestants at the drop of a hat.

The filming is obviously really low budget, it almost seems like it was done on a home video camera. The quality really isn't great and made you very aware that this was a low budget movie. I am not opposed to low budget movies since I know that some are really good, just teamed with all the other bad points, it made this film even worse for me.

I hadn't heard of any of the actors in the film, and I didn't recognise them from any other films. I didn't find any of their performances convincing, which also prevented me from really getting into the whole atmosphere of the film.

The film was released in 2007 and is set in the 'near future', though I didn't see anything over futuristic in the film, it could have quite easily been set today.

At 76 minutes it is a relatively short film, but it really dragged on for me. I never really got into the film to start with so I was always waiting for it to begin properly.

This film isn't even bad in a funny way.. it is just bad. The acting is bad, the story line in bad and the filming is bad. I have to say this is one of the worst films I have ever seen! At £1 it was cheaper than renting a movie, but I wouldn't pay more than that for it. I was alarmed to find it on Amazon for £9.99. I really hope that someone watched this film first and decided they loved it before shelling out that much for it, because I personally don't think it is worth that much.

(also on ciao)

Summary: The worst fim I've ever seen