Review of Doom (2005) by Stuart K — 06 Feb 2015
Based upon the video game series by John Carmack, Tom Hall and John Romero and published by id Software. This action-sci-fi film directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. (Romeo Must Die (2000), Exit Wounds (2001) and Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)) feels derivative and like a carbon copy of the Resident Evil films that were being made at the time.
Plus, it falls into all the pitfalls of video game to screen adaptations, something always gets lost in translation when video games are made into films. Set on Mars in the year 2046, an unseen monster has attacked the Olduvai Research Facility.
Back on Earth, a team of Marines, led by John "Reaper" Grimm (Karl Urban), are sent to Mars by Sergeant Asher Mahonin (The Rock), although Mahonin doesn't want Grimm to go as his sister Dr.
Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pike) is on the facility on Mars. They travel by teleporter, They learn from Samantha that the monster left behind remains known as Imps, which have superhuman abilities. However, they discover one of the infected victims, who is named as Hell Knight (Brian Steele), is using his powers to get to the teleportation device to get to Earth, and he has to be stopped at all costs.
But Hell Knight is able to get to Earth, so Grimm and his team have their work cut out to stop it. This could have been a good bit of sci-fi cheese, but it's far too straight faced, and the CGI is more than a little dodgy, there's too many CGI flames when real ones would have worked too.
This is another black mark against video game films, and trying to give them plots for a film doesn't seem to work at all. Maybe they are a medium that's unfilmable.
This review of Doom (2005) was written by Stuart K on 06 Feb 2015.
Doom has generally received mixed reviews.
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