Review of Doom (2005) by Anders P — 07 Aug 2013

What happens when you take a first person shooter and turn it into a movie? You get well... this shit.

One of the most popular and influential video games ever makes its way to the big screen in this sci-fi thriller. A coalition of Earth's scientific and military interests have established a research colony called Olduvai on the planet Mars, but one day all communication from the outpost stops and no one can tell what has happened -- though the final messages suggest it's not good. Believing foul play may have overtaken Olduvai's crew, the Rapid Response Tactical Squad, a team of specially trained military personnel, are deployed to investigate the situation and, if necessary, eliminate the invaders. But Sarge (Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock) and Reaper (Karl Urban), leaders of the RRTS team, soon discover the situation is far more grim than they could have imagined. An experiment on Olduvai has very literally opened a portal to Hades, and a variety of savage and demonic creatures have overtaken the colony. Now the RRTS must seal off Olduvai, close off any access to Earth, and exterminate the satanic beasts before they can kill again. Doom also stars Rosamund Pike (as Dr. Grimm), Dexter Fletcher, Ben Daniels, and Deobia Oparei. ~ (Mark Deming, Rovi).

The monsters look really cool, the make-up and look and feel of the monsters is captured perfectly here. Keep in mind, this is more based on Doom 3 than the other two Doom games. Some of the action scenes are kind of fun, like the final shootout that is shot entirely from a first person perspective.

Now everything else about the movie is a complete and utterr failure. The script is a fucking mess, with characters that are flat, dull, and uninteresting. The story is all over the place, and in the end it tries to pull some philosophical bullshit at the end and utterly fails. The acting is awful across the board, and the dialogue is just as bad.

The idea of trying to make movies based on video games is one of the most stupid ideas Hollywood has ever come up with. It just doesn't work!!!!