DOOM – Review (Film)

Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Starring: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Karl Urban, and Rosamund Pike
Aus Release Date: 27/10/2005
Rating: 6/10


Ah, good ol’ Doom, a game I never played. But have written about. Repeatedly…Yes, Doom, one of the first shooters. A classic game…

Now there’s no getting around it, we all know that most video game to movie adaptations suck. They really really suck. Thankfully Doom is not one of them (partly because it’s not directed by Uwe Boll) with some decent, if at times over the top, acting, and a mindless but ok storyline.

The Rock and Eomer from Lord of the Rings are in this movie. That’s all you need to know. 

The story makes absolutely no sense but I’ll give it a run down anyway: People go to Mars. People die. Space Marines get sent to Mars. Monsters attack Marines. Marines get turned into monsters. Monsters actually experiments in combining alien with human DNA. Only people with ‘Evil Genes’ are affected.


What? Evil Genes? Yeah I’m pretty sure I didn’t remember that in Biology. Just don’t think about it too much and enjoy the spectacle.


You see, Doom is a movie all about ugly monsters dying and pretty explosions. The monsters are ugly, the explosions pretty. The fights are rather well coreographed and the film dosn’t have any of that ‘Jitter Cam’ crap that directors seem to love these days.

Does *BFG* mean what I think it means? 

The storyline isn’t the problem in this film though. Yes, it’s stupid as hell (pun intended) but so was that of the games. My real gripe with the film is this: Needs more violence.

Yes, the first person sequence was really cool and in someways unique, but…… Just look at the above picture. The Rock, THE ROCK holding The BFG. A gun so awesome its name is the Bio Force Gun  BIG FUCKING GUN! He only uses it three times and kills nothing with it! THREE TIMES! THRICE I SAY WITH NARY A KILL TO ITS NAME! Now that’s just shameful.

You see, in the original Doom, there was heaps of run&gun action which would have translated extremely well into a film,with a large variety of monsters. The film instead gives us the Pinky, Imp and Hellknight demons, which were cool… and a bunch of generic zombies. Sure they took liberties with the original storyline (which, admittedly was already paper thin) but they could have at least left in some more of the monsters and given us more gore and killing.

On the other hand the film tries to build up a foreboding atmosphere and be a serious horror film. At no point in this film was I afraid, scared, or even cringing. It follows the tropes you’d expect of such a film to a ‘T’.

Ultimately the film failed to achieve its own intentions, not even earning back its budget in the film. While the action is quite good and the film is pretty entertaining it’s rather lacking in substance; not a classic film but a fun popcorn flick to watch on a quiet night in, wrapped in a blanket and silently humming The Rock’s theme every time he appears on screen.

THE MOST PIXELLATED MAN IN SPORTS-ENTERTAINMENT! 

Originally written for and posted on Comikkazee.
Posted on the 27th of March, 2012