The film starts out quite well, appearing to offer a complex non-linear plot, an unfolding mystery and a much greater emphasis on character-driven drama, which seems something quite unusual for a plague/biowarfare outbreak thriller like this. Alas such appearances are deceiving and, after a good opening momentum, the film breaks down into a rather ho-hum thriller that fails to wind its tension up. There’s one or two individual scenes with James Marshall taking people hostage and particularly the scenes with the military surrounding the farmhouse that seem to hold great potential for much in the way of suspense but are ultimately scenes that fail to involve one. Moreover as the film goes on, it readily becomes apparent that it is a made on a low budget. Crucially for a film that purports to be a cross-country thriller, most of it gives the appearance of being shot along the same stretch of placid, rural backwater highway.

The film is also somewhat miscast. James Marshall was briefly touted as the newest young star for all of about five minutes in the early 1990s, but failed entirely to do anything that rocked anybody’s socks. As an actor he has quasi-Neanderthal looks and seems slightly slow on the uptake. Cast as a supposedly brilliant genius scientist, he simply is wrong for the part. He’s far too young for one – this is a role for someone in their mid-thirties. Esai Morales is okay in the lead, but it is also a part where Morales just seems far too good-looking and too unobtrusive to carry the part. There’s never a point in the film where Morales seems intensely wound up by the situation. That sad truth is that had Doomsday Man been given a decent budget and a studio polish, the same script might have actually made for a strong and involving thriller. Alas made on the low-budget it is, all the potential slips it by.