Doom Review

For the uninitiated, Doom is a movie based on a series of PC games developed by id Software. In the games, you play as a lone space Marine battling Hell's legions of monsters in order to stop their invasion of Mars and, eventually, Earth. id Software was the company that pioneered the First Person Shooter (or FPS) genre of video games, ushered in the age of 3D gaming, defined the PC as the hardcore gamer's platform of choice, and single-handedly propelled the FPS game format to widespread popularity in the marketplace with a game called Wolfenstien 3D. FPS games' signature trait is that they are played from a First Person behind-the-gun perspective. This helps make the game more immersive, forcing you to experience the game from your character's perspective.

While Wolfenstien was no doubt a revolutionary game, lead programmer John Carmack was never quite happy with the graphics in the game. Wolfenstien was a fairly simplistic point and click affair, you could not look up or down, all the walls were the same height, and all rooms were lit exactly the same. id Software would soon follow up Wolfenstien 3D with a game called Doom. By today's standards, the game's graphics are archaic. However, in the early 90s, they were obsolutely jaw dropping. Doom featured many varied environments, dozens of enemies on screen at once, devastating weapons, massive areas to explore, and enemies that would jump or teleport from out of nowhere to scare the bejesus out of you. Doom was a massive hit and caused huge waves in the video game industry. Many companies tried to improve on Doom's formula but only a small handful were successful in capturing its unique essence and even more simply licensed the game's "engine" to use for their own games, most notably for Star Wars: Dark Forces. Doom would go on to spawn two sequels and the Quake series of games. The movie is most closely based on the latest iteration of the series, Doom 3.

The plot in the movie is its weakest point, same as the games. An unknown threat has seized control of a Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) research station located on Mars and is killing everything in the quarantine area. Sarge (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson), accompanied by fellow Marine John Grimm (Karl Urban), his sister and UAC employee Samantha Grimm (Rosamond Pike), and a squad of crack Marines are sent in to eliminate the threat and recover valuable UAC research data. Of course, whatever is in there isn't about to let them out alive.

This is fairly standard sci-fi/horror fare for the most part. These Marines are purely disposable characters, existing only for the horrific monsters to pick off one at a time. Predictably, each time one is picked off, the rest of the group learns a bit more about the threat that they're facing. Not in time to save themselves, however. What's more, none of the characters in the movie are particularly compelling and all wear their motivations on right their shirt sleeve. Fortunately, we all know that the story is the last thing on our minds in a movie based on a game about shooting everything that moves.

In this department, Doom does not disappoint. The flick is filled to the brim with action, humor and the occasional lackluster jump-out-of-your-seat scares. Just like the games, there's always a corridor to explore or place the characters need to get to in order to complete an objective. In fact, you barely get to see the Martian surface at all. The movie keeps things simple by placing every scene in a corridor or lab somewhere in the complex. The standard 'divide and conquer' horror stand-by limps the barebones plot forward so that it can perpetuate itself to its conclusion.

Doom makes watching these throwaways die entertaining by splashing almost hilarious amounts of gore up on the screen, courtesy of a good variety of monsters pulled directly from the game. Creatures featured in the movie include zombies, a commando zombie, the many eyed imps (minus the flinging of fireballs), the massive hellknight, and the dog-like 'pinkies.' As a side note, having been such a good reproduction of the video games, the movie does fail to pit as many of these monsters against our doomed space marines as I would have liked. All these monsters, with the exception of the zombies, are confronted one at a time.

The good news is that all these monsters are faithfully reproduced from the games in all their spleandor. The bad news is that, like the games, Doom is a dark movie. Most of the time, the viewer is never given an adequate look at these great monsters. I'm not sure if this is to the movie's detriment or credit. That is to say, is it accurately reproducing the game or creating a creepy atmosphere? This movie never really does a great job at producing a creepy atmosphere, and when it does, it is usually only very temporary in order to create some deafeningly cheap scares.

Fortunately for Doom, this movie is not the sum of its parts. While the film is lacking in many respects, it still manages to accurately convey the essence of the video games while being an good brainless action movie besides. In my opinion, this movie, moreso than any other video game movie to date, is pretty damn close to being a perfect reproduction of the look and feel behind this hit video game series. To sum up, if you liked the video games or would enjoy a dumb action/horror flick, Doom is right up your alley. Besides, its not like there's anything else interesting going on at the box office this week.

Doom is rated R for Strong Violence/Gore and language and opened nation-wide in theaters on October 21st.