steve kwan user experience designer

Review: DOOM

(October 22nd, 2005 - 12:29AM)

(2.5 / 5 stars)

I just got back from DOOM. I went in expecting the worst, and was surprised to find something better. It wasn't a masterpiece, and even as a fan of the game I wasn't particularly impressed, but it certainly didn't have me in any rush to leave the theatre.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, by no means a brilliant actor, does an okay job playing the head of the Marines assigned to investigate a disturbance on a Mars facility. There's some other plot stuff, but it's really not even worth noting. Lots of Imps and Hellknights, and a Pinky demon. At first, I was disappointed that there was such a sparse selection from the Doom bestiary, but I suppose that adding more monsters would have put it over the top. As it is, the DOOM movie is not as unbelievable as I would have thought.

That's not to imply that the script is good, or even passable. Most of the problems with DOOM involve extremely poor writing. Luckily, the writing in this movie is a non-issue and takes a back seat to gunfire. The DOOM game - obviously the inspiration for the movie - wasn't about story. It was about atmosphere and killing uglies. Although it's not great, the movie is at least average on both counts.

One thing that has gotten a bit of buzz is a short segment near the end in which Reaper, also known as "The DOOM guy," picks up a gun and blows away monsters from a first-person perspective. While this is an admirable attempt to honour the game and break new ground in film, it really doesn't work well. In fact, watching someone play DOOM for a few minutes would be far more exciting.

So the question remains: which would have been better: this movie, or an hour and a half long recording of someone playing DOOM 3? I personally think the latter would have been more entertaining, but that speaks more of the quality of the game than of the crappiness of this movie. Overall, DOOM was less of a disappointment than I imagined it would be. If you're a fan of the game, check it out. If not, you might want to see something else.