Doom

The year is 1993. A young, extremely handsome guy is working in I.T. somewhere in England. A computer game called Doom is released by a company called id Software, and said handsome guy's mind is blown. He learns how to network computers together, solely for the purpose of playing the game with his work colleagues located in different areas of the building. The game is a "first-person-shooter", a term he's not heard before. He could play the game with his work colleagues, all working together toward one common goal; to defeat the monsters. Or he could just blow his work colleagues to shit; that worked too. After Doom, the world of computer games would be changed forever.

Fast forward to 2005 and a film is released called Doom. It claims to be based upon the game of the same name. Fast forward again until 2014 and the older, but still extremely handsome guy who played Doom all those years ago watches the film. He is underwhelmed.

Okay, so I'm going to run through the "plot" of this film for you. There isn't really much of a plot to speak of, mainly I suspect because this film is based upon a video game where you just run around corridors shooting the crap out of anything that moves. But anyway. So there's this scientific research facility on Mars. And as is customary in these types of films, something has gone massively tits up there. The workers are slowly being killed off by monsters. There is a teleport thing underground somewhere in the Nevada desert that can beam people directly to the research facility on Mars (and back again). So the marines are called in to try and kill off the monsters, and obviously stop any of them teleporting back to earth.

So our group of marines is assembled. We have the main hero guy, his superior who's played by The Rock, and a few other token guys who will eventually become monster fodder. They teleport up to Mars and immediately meet Dexter Fletcher. I was taken a bit by surprise seeing him in this to be honest. Dexter's top half is completely normal, but from the waist down basically he just has a set of wheels where his legs should be. We're told that this is because Dexter went through the teleport several years ago when it was less reliable, and sadly his bottom half never made it. Then we're introduced to Sam. She's one of the scientists. She also happens to be hero guy's sister. We're supposed to believe that there's a big rift between the two of them, because Sam followed in her father's footsteps and became a scientist whereas hero guy, John, decided to shoot at shit for a living instead.

They find one of the scientist guys still alive, but he's in a bad way. He rips off his own ear, so clearly he's having a bit of a bad day. They take him to the medical lab so that Sam can run some tests on him. A couple of the marines get chomped by monsters and The Rock stars getting a bit pissed off.  I guess he's not having a very good day either. The scientist guy who's in a bad way slowly mutates into one of the monsters. So it turns out the monsters aren't monsters at all, they're just mutated staff from the facility.

The Rock, who's still rather pissed off, concludes that they need more firepower and so heads to the armoury (why does a research facility have an armoury?). Anyway, The Rock finds a big-ass gun there and is a bit happier for five minutes. But a few more marines get chomped as he's pissed off again. He thinks that Sam knows more than she's letting on. Eventually she admits that they've been conducting genetic experiments on humans. Basically they inject them with stuff and they either become super-human and able to heal themselves, or alternatively they turn into raging mutant monsters. She laughably says that which way they end up depends on a gene they've discovered for evil. I must admit I zoned out a bit at this point as it just seemed like nonsense to me. The Rock is still in a pissy mood and he doesn't buy that any of the people they find won't turn into raging monsters at some point. So he basically orders his remaining men to kill anyone they find.

Sadly one of the monsters manages to teleport to earth and the marines follow it back down. They find loads of dead bodies back at the underground facility. The Rock orders his men to shoot each one in the head to make sure they're dead so they can't mutate into monsters. The rookie marine of the group finds a room full of women and children who are hiding. He refuses to shoot them and so The Rock shoots him in the head. It's pretty clear that The Rock has gone full-on mental trousers at this point, but then he gets dragged off by a monster himself. Hero guy John tells his sister Sam to sit tight, and what follows is a scene where we see the action first-person from John's perspective as he goes around shooting monsters. There's no real point to this scene, but for me it was the best scene in the film. One of John's victims includes a mutated Dexter Fletcher. We know it's him because bizarrely the monster still has wheels for legs. John encounters The Rock, who's clearly starting to mutate. They have a gun battle for a while but then The Rock tells John they should go man-on-man in a fist fight instead. And stupidly John agrees. (Why the bloody hell didn't John just shoot The Rock when he was unarmed? Some macho bollocks I suppose). Eventually John manages to send The Rock back through the teleport with a grenade and blow him to shit. John carries Sam to the lift and they ride up to the surface of the facility. The end.

This film is bollocks. I dearly wanted to love it, just as I had loved the computer game, but I just couldn't. It didn't really stand much chance of working for me to be honest, because quite frankly I can't stand The Rock. He has no discernible acting talent whatsoever. They'd have been better off using an actual rock. He's just angry in this film, and nothing else. Karl Urban plays John (yes, McCoy from the Star Trek reboots), but again he's not really required to do much in the way of acting. His acting in Star Trek is far superior. In another league.

I can't really accuse this film of not following the plot of the game, because there isn't really one to follow. But apart from one short scene I wasn't reminded of the game at all. I think they could've done a better job of being more faithful to the look and feel of the game, especially as they didn't have a plot to worry about. Unsurprisingly the scene that worked best for me was when we get to go first-person view with John. That obviously looked most like the video game, but it was well executed too, and the monsters were pretty faithful to those in the game. The other bit that worked for me is the end credits (no, seriously). There's a 3D animated scene that looks like what I imagine a 2014 version of Doom would look like. One sin for me which is totally unforgivable is that they didn't use the door opening sound from the game! If you've played Doom then you know exactly what I'm talking about. And that sound has since been used in quite a few sci-fi films. So why couldn't they use it in the bloody film that's supposed to be based on the game? It would be like having a Star Trek film without the door opening sound from the Enterprise.

This film had none of the tension of playing the game. The game was quite an immersive experience at the time. But I think a good film can be an immersive experience too. Sadly this wasn't. But okay, if we take the title of the film and what it purports to be out of the equation, what then? Is it any good as a film in its own right? On balance I'd have to say not really. There's just not enough plot there to keep you engaged. So it doesn't work as a film based upon Doom and it doesn't work as a film in isolation. Bottom line is it just doesn't work. However that's just my opinion and it seems that many other people view this film quite favourably. I guess I'm just not seeing whatever it is that they see. On IMDb it's currently rated 5.2 out of 10. As a standalone film that's probably about right, if maybe a little on the high side for me personally. But as a film based on the classic computer game, for me it would have to score much lower.