Doom movie review

With the exception of people running through dark, metallic hallways, shooting stuff, the movie had about fuck-all to do with the game. The sad thing about it is that it seems like it would have taken so little to make it at least passable. I mean, I doubt fans of the game would be overly critical about stuff like lack of character or story, but when you tinker around with the essential elements of what sets Doom apart from all the other video games, that's when people start to become annoyed.

People who are familiar with Doom know it as the first-person shooter where you run around and kill demons from Hell. Not aliens. Not bioengineered monsters. Demons from Hell. So why on God's green earth did the makers of the movie decide to change the nature of the threat to genetically altered humans who turn into monsters? We've seen that before. The Resident Evil films covered that territory. (Sure, I don't think they did an altogether good job of it, but apparently enough people thought so.)

As I said before, most people won't quibble about things like lack of character development; that's not the point of the whole thing. But the filmmakers sought to give the characters identifiable traits of some sort as a substitute for development. This turned out to be truly unfortunate, as it made them unlikeable. The two that stick out most are the sleazy/horny guy (played by Joe Chill from Batman Begins) and the religious guy who quotes bible passages and cuts crosses into his flesh every time he sins or takes the lord's name in vain or whatever. You know, this latter character might have been right at home had the movie actually dealt with a literal interpretation of Hell, but it didn't, so he's just some guy with an annoyingly quirky trait.

The only point at which the movie becomes truly entertaining is during the much talked about first-person sequence. This scene basically turns into the video game, and we look through the eyes of one of the characters as he wanders through dark corridors, blowing away monsters and even using a chainsaw on one. Unfortunately, nothing before or after it is worthy of its presence.

In short, they might as well have just titled this movie Generic Aliens Rip-Off #237 and had done with it. Sure, it wouldn't have had the name recognition that would have brought more ticket buyers in, but I'm sure the money they would have saved by not paying the licensing fee for the title would have been comparable.

I mean, would it have killed them to throw in some horns, cloven hooves and pentagrams?