Well I’ll say this for ‘Doomed’, it’s gotta be the shortest feature length movie I’ve ever seen, that’s for sure. I believe a film has to clock in at least 75 minutes to be considered a feature and Doomed is listed at 76 minutes, but since my DVD player is right below my eyeline counting the time, this thing was over at the 71 minute mark with another five minutes of credits added in for padding. Is that a good thing? Well in this case I guess it is because ‘Doomed’ probably didn’t need be any longer than it was which admittedly goes a long way to this thing winning my affections.

The year is 2020 and apparently things in our little society have changed where stalkers and cyber hackers get life sentences and the death penalty and stuff. Reality TV has changed a bit too since we can assume that in 2020 we probably aren’t quite ready for an episode of ‘Survivor: The Moon’ but we can do survivor on Zombie Island. Simple enough as we have four teams of two, designated by the color of shirt they have on, with the goal for the game being very simple. We drop you off on one side of the island and all you have to do is make it across the island, collect a bunch of loot and win your freedom. Not that our contestants actually volunteered for this gig in the first place but I am pretty sure they wouldn’t have had they known that this island was infested with fleshing devouring zombies who can run a forty yard dash faster than Marion Jones in the middle of a roid rage.

Our favorite team is the blue team which features murderer Trey Dog (Andre McCoy) and Benny (Edwin Villa) who committed some crime or another, and these two set about kicking each others ass even before the game starts and both eventually die for their trouble. This makes us sad because Trey Dog had the potential to be quite possibly the most irritating character in the history of movies and we did not want to see him check out so early, though Benny somehow regenerates himself from his death wounds and proceeds kick much zombie ass for the next seventy or so minutes while

bleeding profusely from numerous orifices. The rest of our contestants consist of mass murdering army dude Reese (Steve Cryen), Euthanizing Nurse Leigh (Sarah Diaz), Computer hacking Wes (Aaron Gaffey), Kyra the stalker (Kara Schaff), Dawn (Heidi Marie Wasner) who is one hostile sista with an incredibly bad attitude with a smokin' body, and some other angry dudes and dudettes who we’re not going to mention. Why are zombies on this island? Well no one knows for sure but I got two words for you to chew on. Gub and Ment. So with America watching and fiddi mil awaiting the winner on the other side, who will survive Survival Island 2020?

So where do we start with this one? Is it a good movie? Well, not really. Since it barely scrapes by at seventy minutes, and that includes stylized, videogame type freeze frames every time one character hits one another or strikes a zombie, and it also includes a mid-movie wrap up of everything we have seen up until this point, there’s not a lot of room for ‘character development’. In a movie like this you kind of expect to hear at least one character drone on about what crime they committed and how they were railroaded or whatnot, but not in this flick. Run, release the zombies and run some more. This movie is somewhat similar to the Stone Cold joint earlier this year in ‘The Condemned’ except that one didn’t have the brilliant foresight to cast zombies, though it did have a sizzling hot sista in it as well in Emilia Burns. Actually this has me wondering who IS hotter, Emilia Burns or Heidi Marie Wasner? That my friends is a toss up and has absolutely nothing to do with either movie.

Though ‘Doomed’ isn’t a good movie in the sense of character development, plotting, scripting and acting, this doesn’t mean that it’s lacking entertainment value as director Michael Su focuses on the action and ONLY on the action. The zombies are fast, mean and are in endless supply, characters die quite freely, even the ones who you normally might think would qualify for Hero Man or Final Girl status, the TV style presentation and chintzy special effects go well with the overall empty and vacuous narrative and it’s mercifully short. Even if you watch this movie and claim it ‘The Worst Movie Ever’, it didn’t waste hardly any of your time allowing you get back to viewing your Soderbergh ‘Oceans’ trilogy.

Like I said, ‘Doomed’ is hardly a good movie and is a true representation of throwaway entertainment if ever there was one, but it does move, has plenty of action and can be watched between bathroom breaks. Who can be entirely mad at that?