1/4 stars
Doom is a movie that pleases neither fans of the game or fans of action movies in general. Being both I can say this with some authority. ID Software’s 1993 Doom is often heralded as one of the greatest video games ever made and with good reason. It fathered the popularity of the first person shooter genre, was satisfying and cathartic to play, and graphically set the stage for the PC becoming the superior platform for gaming. Alongside BioShock, Donkey Kong Country, and Final Fantasy VI it is one of my favorite video games of all time. It’s simple on story (forgivable in a video game), but it plays like a game of chess. More than just “guns blazing” action it is a game of resource management and split-second decisions on choice of weapon and the player’s movements.
But enough about the video game. I am here to review the movie.
The movie adaptation is a chaotic mess of noise and bad lighting that does no justice to video games or to science fiction movies. Instead of the satanic, heavy-metal inspired inferno of Gothic imagery that made the game so memorable – and so controversial – we get instead a close quarters action thriller that tries to imitate Aliens, but in the end barely reaches the quality of Jason X. At least that movie, awful as it was, had some personality to it. This film has none.
The characters are not characters at all. They exist only because somebody has to shoot the guns, wear the costumes, and get eviscerated every once and awhile. Being written the way they are, the casting can only be an expensive waste of time. Rosamund Pike, The Rock, Karl Urban, and the talented and too often underrated Richard Brake should have fired their agents after starring in this non-spectacle. There is no chemistry to any of their performances. They grunt, scream, and utter some false-ringing phrases of machismo. What the writers don’t seem to understand is that without character investment and plot development, action scenes are going to be boring.
Even had the visuals not been drab and unappealing, the persistent action sequences lack interest. Everything is dimly lit to disguise the paltry special effects budget; the sequences mostly shot in close-up of grimacing faces of space marines space marining their way through dark hallways, strobe lights, and a lot of muzzle flashes and shattering glass.
There is one mildly impressive scene where Karl Urban’s “character” goes into first-person mode (like in the video game) as he fires through a gauntlet of monsters and demons. But the sequence is out of place and pointless. The rest of the film is not shot this way and it doesn’t serve the plot at all. Although admittedly I thought the hell knight wielding a chainsaw was kinda nifty.
My use of the word demon might be a bit premature. In the games they were demons because they were accidentally summoned from Hell by experimental portal tech. But, here they are said to be ancient natives of Mars’s moons that were dug up by an archaeological team. They are explicitly claimed to have one extra chromosome compared to humans and this apparently gives them super-strength and high intelligence. They were products of an ancient eugenic program that turned them into murderous monsters. I won’t comment on the feasibility of all that because I am not a geneticist, but I suspect the science behind this lore is fairly dubious at best.
At any rate the monsters can barely be seen throughout most of the movie. I would expect theater goers expecting some sort of spectacle in 2005 felt ripped off. None of these people spending their cash on a Doom movie were asking for badly lit shadows scurrying past the camera from a distance. But that is what they got, and when we finally get any decent look at the monsters in the film’s last 30 minutes it is too little too late.
This movie really has nothing to do with Hell or even monsters. It doesn’t even have much to do with space marines. There would have to be more genuine camaraderie for that. It doesn’t even have a story worthy of attention. The plot never thickens, it merely simmers. It sticks on one point and doesn’t develop. The space marines go to mars, growl, shoot at things. and die on senseless repeat until the movie is over. Doom was a cheap and tawdry experience to sit through.
If you really want to watch a good adaptation of a video game go watch the Fallout TV series on Amazon. But this movie can stay in Hell where it belongs. It’s the same Circle where they keep the Uwe Boll films.
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Writers: Dave Callaham, Wesley Strick
Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, John Wells, John D. Schofield, Laura Holstein, David Minkowski, Henning Molfenter, Thierry Potok, Jeremy Steckler, Matthew Stillman
Cast: The Rock (Sarge), Karl Urban (John Grimm), Rosamund Pike (Samantha Grimm), Deobia Oparei (Destroyer), Ben Daniels (Goat), Razaaq Adoti (Duke), Richard Brake (Portman), Al Weaver (The Kid), Dexter Fletcher (Pinky), Brian Steele (Hell Knight), Yao Chin (Mac), Robert Russell (Dr. Carmack), Daniel York (Lt. Hunegs), Ian Hughes (Sanford Crosby)
Composer: Clint Mansell
Cinematographer: Tony Pierce-Roberts
Editor: Derek Brechin
Perspectives on Film 