It's an early 2000s video game adaptation, they tried admittedly but it ain't all that and a bag of chips. I am kinda new to the Doom thing, played a good few levels of the first, beat the 2016 and Doom Eternal games that was a lot of fun and a wonderful de-stresser, and I'm fairly pumped for The Dark Ages so I figured it was worth at least a look into the movie. Now let's just be on the level here there isn't much plot in Doom, even novelizations of Doom are just demon, bang bang, moving on. So it's not a hard story to botch...but. The movie isn't bad, but it ain't too friggin' great either. Set in the fairly distant future of 2046 where humans have set up a research station on Mars where oopsy daisy we unearthed some evil and a tactical team of marines are transported there essentially to rescue scientists before getting knee deep in the dead. Serviceable story, but the devil is in the details and that's where the score wanes a bit. Admittedly the cast is decent with Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Dwayne Johnson, Richard Brake, and Deobia Oparei with some admittedly acting better than others but they get the job done. I will give a good amount of respect and props for the singular fact that the director of the movie wanted to do as much in camera, it could have been absurdly simple to take the easy way out and CG the bejeezus out of this movie but you get plenty of sets that are fairly extensive, full on creature suits from Stan Winston's company, and only usage of CG when it's necessary. That is some commendable shit for 2005, and for a video game adaptation at that! I'm not sure if Doom 3 had much influence on the movie with it being released a year beforehand, but this leans more towards the "horror" than the action. And I use bunny ears there because it's the most lackluster horror in a horror movie I've ever seen if you even want to call it that. My biggest gripe about the movie is the demons, or aliens, or whatever the fuck they are cause they're not from Hell, interesting designs admittedly but I have never seen a bigger batch of wimps in my life. You're demons, you don't run and sneak attack if someone shoots at you, you disembowl them and chew on their eyes! Like seriously the action is so just not good, this is DOOM we are talking about and the gunplay is below average. I understand they only had so much budget and couldn't do a shooting range with 20 monsters in a room with explosive barrels and all that, but it needed to pump that energy up. At the start okay fine, you need some buildup and mystery. But the action if anything should have escalated to a fever pitch as the movie progressed to the one on one boss fight essentially. But it's much of the same, wandering ill lit hallways and trying desperately to even see a monster let alone make it swiss fucking cheese. Even when they do a first person view with some shooty action near the end it's less Doom and more interactive DVD menu. But they did put effort into it, this wasn't a cash grab with a big middle finger to the audience and fans, even if everything didn't work it's not a terrible film. Honestly my feelings can be summed up in the box office revenue, the film had a budget of $60 million and the box office gross was $58 million. So close, just a little off, nearly but no cigar. That sums it up. And I wasn't hopping in here ready to be blown away or expecting something grand, I just gotta call it like I see it. I would rather just watch someone play Doom for about 90 minutes, but that's just me. I'm sure there's a fan of it somewhere and I won't put you down man. It's a decent movie but I have no urge to watch it again, so I give it 2 stars, 5.5/10!
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