Film Review: Doom (2005)

Few decades ago it became fashionable to put the blame for school shootings and other forms of social pathology among the world’s youth on violent video games. While such claims might be a subject of debate, there are some circumstances, when video games, albeit very indirectly, can cause uncontrolled rage and an insatiable desire to kill. It happens among gamers when they see what is Hollywood doing with their favourite games while adapting them to big screen. Doom, 2005 science fiction action film directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, based on the popular series of first person shooters started in 1993, is one of such examples

The film's plot is set on Mars in mid 2040s. It starts with research laboratory belonging to Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) experiencing serious incident following an experiment gone terribly wrong. Team of elite marines led by Sergeat Asher “Sarge” Mahonin (played by Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson) is sent via wormhole portal sent there from Earth to retrieve the data. It soon becomes clear that they are will have to deal with a small army of monsters capable of either killing humans or transforming them into grotesquely altered zombies. In their confrontation with these creatures, Sarge’s team will be aided by Dr. Samantha “Sam” Grimm (played by Rosamund Pike), a scientist whose brother John “the Reaper” Grimm (played by Karl Urban) is one of Sarge's team members.

Feature film adaptations of video games in 1990s and early 2000s seemed to be cursed by generally poor quality, and Doom seemed to fit the same pattern. Despite having relatively high budget of 60 million US$, the film looks cheap, with most of the action taking place indoors, with monsters being reconstructed through CGI that doesn’t look that convincing nor as scary as they were to video game players a decade earlier.

But the worst problem of the film is the script by David Callaham and Wesley Strick, which tries to provide something more conventional story and characters to what was actually the most basic of all premises in the original. They follow the formula established by James Cameron in Aliens decades earlier and try to create characters of space marines whose fates the audience would care about before the real action starts.

This concept is, however, undermined by clumsy dialogues, wooden direction by Bartkowiak, and marines and other characters being written in pathetic way. The cast isn’t of much help either. For example, otherwise talented British actress Rosamund Pike is once again wasted in role that requires her to fake bad American accent and use wide-eyed expressions at every conceivable opportunity. The Rock, despite being getting Razzie for his role in this film, appears much more suited for *Doo.

Doom becomes somewhat more watchable towards the end, especially considering the interesting and somewhat inovative sequence where the viewer experiences the action from the protagonist's perspective, thus reliving some of the most intense situations from the game. However, this sequence is too brief to elevate Doom above the Hollywood mediocrity or even bring it close to the standards of the screen adaptations of Resident Evil.

RATING: 4/10 (+)

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