Come get some.
Doom (2005): 6 out of 10: Sometimes films or other media are so eviscerated by the critics that by the time one watches it, one is predisposed to give it little sympathy. The Days Gone video game is actually a good example. It is a perfectly serviceable, if not fun, motorcycle focused zombie survival game. You wonder what critics were on about while playing.
In addition, sometimes a mindless action film is carried on the shoulders of its charismatic star. 1986’s Raw Deal only works at all because of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Throw in say Jalal MerhiI as the lead instead and the truly mediocre action film will surface.
So yes, I am laying the groundwork here on why I gave Doom a six out of ten instead of, say, a four out of ten. Doom has three stars I genuinely enjoy and I have a slight backlash to the critical drubbing. Oh well onwards to my review of people wearing black in unlit corridors the movie.
So in the movie Doom let me welcome you to the future, or rather, a version of it cobbled together from the leftover set pieces of a dozen better sci-fi horror films. And a dozen previous Alien ripoffs.
Doom transports us to the grimy corridors of a Mars-based research facility where scientists have been poking at things they probably shouldn’t, and surprise, surprise, we have monsters (sort of).
Named after the legendary video game series, this cinematic adaptation aims for gritty space terror and misses it by a country mile.
Enter the Rapid Response Tactical Squad, a group of heavily armed, lightly characterized soldiers who are called in to clean up the mess. Led by the imposing Sarge (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and joined by a reluctant protagonist named Reaper (Karl Urban, giving it his gruff best), the team is full of your usual genre suspects. Their mission? Try to solve a mystery that could have been an email and rescue pretty much nobody, including themselves.
What follows is a gloomy, gun heavy crawl through dark corridors and even darker sewer levels with even darker secret areas. Okay, it is just a bunch of soldiers with no night vision goggles and an aversion to light switches.
Oh, and they split up all the time to go down the corridors by themselves, which based on movies of this genre is standard operating procedure right there with hiding that bite you just received from the alien monster that is suspiciously wearing a lab coat.
The film flirts with genetic engineering and ancient Martian artifacts as potential culprits, but mostly it’s zombies of all things. Well, mostly it is people dressed in black walking down dark corridors. But occasionally there is a zombie.
Tonally, Doom walks a fine line between someone who has heard of the game and someone with a script that would have been too shallow for 2004’s Alien Lockdown.
The Good
The Good: Doom really has a great cast. Karl Urban is always a favorite in this household. Rosamund Pike is an honest to goodness talented actress even though she seemed to have forgotten her bra on earth. (Not that I am one to complain.) And then we have Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. The Rock was still in the part of his career where he didn’t mind playing the heel, so I found him quite refreshing.
The rest of the cast honestly seems like a B team from a Predator sequel. Nothing awful, but nothing terribly noteworthy either. Still, our three stars carry the load.
The Bad
The Bad: Doom is not quite as bad as the critical drubbing would have one believe. By which I mean it is watchable. That said, there are some issues. One of the biggest problems is simply one of pacing. Doom takes a long while to really get going. Lots of people walking down dark corridors, never bothering to turn on the lights. (As regular readers know, this is one of my pet peeves.)
I like some nods to the game, such as the BFG and the quick but fun first person sequence. (There was criticism that it took too long for the Rock to get the BFG but I think the halfway point of the movie works fine. And honestly, there was not much to shoot at in the first half, anyway.)
Unfortunately, the gunplay only lasts so long and before you know it we are in action hero fist fight mode, which neither fits the game, the genre, or the plot until that point. It seemed like a well the Rock is a wrassler so we need to have some wrasslen.
The Ugly
The Ugly: Imagine making a film adaptation of Castle Wolfenstien but deciding not to have any Nazis. Or the film adaptation of Duke Nukem and not have any strippers.
That is kind of the main (and understandable) problem people have with Doom. I mean, it is demons on Mars. Not complicated at all. So the idea to make a Doom film and well leave out the whole demons thing seems like more than just a swing and a miss.
It is hardly the biggest miss by a video game adaptation. I mean, as long as we have 1993’s Super Mario Bros. and 2001’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within that crown is safe.
There are other major issues. There is a scene late in the film where Doom goes all No Russian with The Rock in the Vladimir Makarov role and Doom does not show it. Why introduce that and not follow thru. It was not as if we were overwhelmed with excitement up to that point and needed a breather.
The script legitimately has some good ideas besides The Rock going all Lieutenant William Calley on the scientists and their families. The mutation idea could have worked. The brother and sister dynamic between Karl Urban and Rosamund Pike had opportunities for heartfelt reflection.
Or and hear me out here… crazy idea I know…”In the future, an unnamed marine is posted to a dead-end assignment on Mars after assaulting a superior officer who ordered his unit to fire on civilians. He secures the perimeter as ordered while the entire response team is wiped out. With no way out and armed with only a pistol, he enters the base intent on revenge”
Start with that and have some trapped scientists, a teleportation gate to Hell and lots and lots of demons. Hell as disappointing and unnecessarily plot heavy as Doom 3 was the basic “In Doom 3, a Marine stationed on a Martian research facility must survive a demonic invasion after a teleportation experiment opens a gateway to Hell. As the base descends into chaos, he battles through possessed scientists and Hellspawn to stop the evil at its source.” would have been a massive improvement.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: Doom goes through almost its entire run time and in reality there is almost never a moment where the film lets loose. Where everything hits the fan. A movie like Doom is made for such moments and yet the script seems to have one hand behind its back.
Still, I like the stars and the film moved along with some decent scenes and some good ideas even if the movie never fully committed or delivered on any of them. A barely average sci-fi horror film with an above average cast. There are worse fates for a Saturday night watch.
