Doom (DVD, 2006, Widescreen Extended Edition)

This movie is based in the future and a portal has been discovered leading from Earth to Mars. The government has set up a research base on Mars supposedly to examine Martian relics and their lost civilization. Unfortunately the scientists are conducting genetic experiments and surprise surprise, something goes wrong. A group of marines are soon sent to the base to discover what happened to the scientists. Sarge, played by the Rock, leads the unit and they soon are shooting everything from zombie scientists to all manner of ugly beasties.

There are lots of problems with this movie. First, and there's no real way to get around this, the acting is terrible. The only exception to this, and I mean the only exception, is Karl Urban (Lord of the Rings). Everyone else who acted in this movie looked like they couldn't wait to go home. To go along with the bad acting, the plot is awful. It's an old and overused theme about saving the dumb scientists or civilians from evil critters. James Cameron's "Aliens" starring Sigourney Weaver was probably the best done of these types of movies. Doom, however, is nowhere near that league. The titles of the characters are also a bit cheesy (Goat, Reaper, Sarge, Kid, etc). I kept waiting for Maverick and Goose to pop out of a dark corridor. Finally, the film is really dark. I don't mean depressing, I mean it's poorly lit. Its probably a safe assumption that's its done to hide the sets or monsters but the audience needs to see something. The score, music, soundtrack, etc, are also horrendous.

With all of that being said the movie does stay true to its video game origins and Doom is one of the most popular video games of all time. This movie also has a dark humor about it and you actually laugh at some of the gory scenes and corny one liners like "If it breathes - kill it!" Also, Critics didn't seem to like it but near the end of the movie it switches to a first person shooter view as Reaper (Urban) fights his way through the beasties. Fans of the game, and I'm one, will enjoy seeing some of the old bad guys getting chopped up with the classic Doom chain saw.

Doom set out to be a grisly shoot-em-up video game take off and it succeeded. Don't expect brilliant acting and an academy award nominated plot because its not here. Doom is just campy, gory, and sometimes really stupid fun but in the end it's actually entertaining.