REVIEW: Doom

EDIT: This is rather long, so I'll sum up for those how don't want to read. Terrible flic. it doesn't know what kind of film is and doesn't do anyting it tries to do well at all. Don't waste any time or money on this movie.

This is not a Doom movie. This is a movie that strives to be a monster movie, a zombie movie and a regular ole action flic that slaps on a video game title to sell tickets. Unfortunately, it fails in nearly all of these respects, and the end result is a string of nonsense and poorly connected plot points.

The film does sport plenty of action, but even that manages to be rather bland and rediculous. Some of the set ups are too obvious and distract from what little credibility this movie might have ("'It's a holding cell.' 'How do you know?' 'The walls are electrified.'" Hmmm, electrified walls, I wonder where this is going eventually).

It begins as a horror/monster flic without any monsters. It opens with the monsters not being seen but killing people (per usual), wastes no time in getting our marines in there where the monsters are, but still doesn't allow us to actually see any monsters until about 45 minutes into the film. This 45 minutes is very poorly spent, too. Unlike most moster flics that wait to reveal what's in the shadows, they completely skip any sort of suspensful build up and only provide minimal character development. Instead what is presented is a bunch of scenes showcasing that we have a group of really trigger happy soldiers who want to try to look relaly cool in their uniforms with their guns. They fire and/or jump at about 20 different things that are not monsters and should not be fired and/or jumped at, making this standard gag enormously overused and leaving the audience begging for our heros to actually A. see an actual monster or B. learn to actually hit something with those guns. Their aim is terrible for being highly trained military men. When you see a doorway with a thing inside it, you should see bullets hit something besides the doorframe. I mean, I could do that. Oh, but wait, that would mean no flashy sparks all over the place. My bad.

So you finally see a monster, and the movie abruptly stops being much of a monster movie. You still have a few instances where you get the "OMG, what's in the shadows!!!!" crap, but mostly you see a continued series of "we see something. It's big and fast and running away and we really can't shoot very well, so lets run after it until we all magically meet up again somehow having lost the monster, only for it to come back in about 30 seconds and we kill it then. But we can't kill it until after it's picked off at least one of our men."

So, after this tiring procedure, the movie alters yet again into a zombie flic when we learn that somehow, our dead friends are becoming these creatures. Don't ask how, 'cause it's a painfully horrible plot point that's a really tough pill to swallow. And that's after swallowing the horse pills that are the rest of the plot holes in the movie.

Oh, it gets worse. Read on only if you plan on never seeing the movie, which is my recommendation. For those of you who wish to skip the spoilers, I'll put an "end spoilers" mark below.

**SPOILERS**

So, we learn that on ancient Mars (where the movie is set), there was a civilization that had these superhumanish kinda people because they had an extra set of chromosomes, and this lab is set up to figure out how that worked. They managed to extract these chormosomes and inject them into somebody. This person didn't turn into a superhuman, but a monster (one of the very monsters plaguing our troops).

Our lady protoganist, a scientist for this company doing the research on Mars, figures out that somehow this extra set of chromosomes can tell if a person is fundamentally good or evil, and it suggests that it does so by reading the 10% of the human genome that apparently haven't been figured out (the "blueprint to the soul" they call it).

Suddenly, Sarge (The Rock) is saying every civilian should die. There's a tense moment when he shoots one of his own squad for insabordination and a slight stand-off ensues. This failed to be comprehensible, because this isn't at all how Sarge was portrayed before this point in the movie. It is a character they could have developed, but instead he seems like a decent military guy until this completely unforseen twist. If they wanted to do this with the character, they needed to ease into the sudden extreme actions he takes. Unfortunately, this had the potential to be the most intreguing part of the movie despite its poor development, but the stand off is interrupted and the script writers are saved from having to write a good resolution for this conflict by an intruding monster.

Well, when a bunch of infected civilians attack, Sarge is dragged into their mass, our lady protagonist's brother who happens to be on Sarge's squad is hit by a ricotched bullet from his own gun (I told you they sucked at shooting) and is bleeding to death. So sister/scientist injects him with the missing chormosome knowing that despite all the people he's killed with the marines he isn't a killer at heart and will be fine. Not sure what exactly genre this part of the movie fits into, but it certainly doesn't fit into any of the above or below, so it counts as it's own.

Of course he becomes a superhuman. Sarge however, as revealed in that confusing and abrupt stand-off shortly before, is evil and is becoming a monster. The two fight and the movie ends as a pretty run of the mill action movies. Sarge hasn't actually turned into a monster yet, you just are supposed to know it's coming. So it's actually still just two humans fighing each other: first with guns, then with the standard "Wait, let's settle this the old fashioned way" hand-to-hand combat that any action movie with a clear good guy and bad guy ends. The main problem with this is that Sarge wasn't a bad guy less then 30 minutes ago, and this other dude seemed like just a slightly more developed side character.


**END SPOILERS**

This movie tries to open like a monster movie, build like a zombie movie, rise to full climax like some kind of hero story, and resolve itself like a standard action/kung fu flic. It fails miserably at all points. Instead of picking a direction and going with it, the powers that be instead tried to peice different genres together. C'mon you guys, you could've at least tried a blender to get all four going together at the same time. The plot is terrible and has more flaws then I've ever seen in a movie. The plot twists aren't the sudden suprises that make a movie great, but the confusing transitions from one genre to the next that are all ultimately cheezey and wholey unbelieveable (and that's coming for a fan of The Matrix).

My final beef with the flic: the title. As far as I could tell, this movie had absolutly nothing to do with the Doom video game series. It had the BFG, a brief use of the chainsaw (again, rather confusing and poorly thrown in there), the character Sarge, and it took place on Mars. I think that's about it. Oh yeah, and the brief section (poorly thown in and poorly created) that takes place like an FPS video game; it was a sequence that may have sounded good on the drawing board, but the filmmakers really should have seen how crappy it was and left it out. Although I guess if they did that for the rest of the movie, there wouldn't be a movie.

BOTTOM LINE: 2/10