Doom

Doom (Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak)

Long-time cinematographer Bartkowiak has made nothing but ridiculous movies since becoming a director: Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds, and the epitome of silliness, Cradle 2 the Grave. Written by David Callaham and veteran Wesley Strick (Arachnophobia, Final Analysis, Cape Fear, Wolf, The Saint), this is based on the groundbreaking video game from id Software. You mean it was a video game? No way!

How in the world do you believe you are arrogant enough to adapt a video game for a big screen movie? I mean, seriously. Video games have gotten advanced, and along with it, they've started to get more complex stories to go along with them. But like most games, Doom is not story-based. It is based on the fact that people like to blow stuff up. You needed little complexity to enjoy the game, just blasting enemies left and right with oodles of blood. If you wanted complexity you could try to find secret rooms and stuff, but that's as far as it went. Of course, most of the game-to-movie titles we see are weak on story--but if I'm not controlling the carnage it's like watching a buddy play it. I'll thumb through a magazine waiting for my turn.

Doom concerns a team of killers led by Sarge (The Rock), who have been called upon to kill monsters at a biolab on Mars. And here's where the movie really starts to screw up. Do we actually need the story of the scientist sister (Rosamund Pike) and her Sarge-led brother (Karl Urban), who actually turn out to be the main characters? And since when was Doom about bioterror? They could have slapped the name Resident Evil on this and I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. Doom focuses on a couple of monsters well-known to the series but mostly it's a bunch of zombies, and in one sequence where Urban's character gets a shot of some sort of drug and the movie switches to first-person a la the game, it feels more like House of the Dead than Doom. In fact, the movie Doom is about as good as the adaptation of that piece of shit.

We find out the monsters are being created through a 24th chromosome (who cares?) and as the movie dutifully explains, some become monsters and some can't handle it and die. It doesn't matter. And there's a point in the movie where one of the team gets fried in battle, and we actually have to sit through them trying to resuscitate the poor bastard--we didn't even like him in the first place...just let him go. It is great to see The Rock play an overzealous commander who eventually becomes one of the biomonsters, though. That's where you get some guilty fun, but other than that, if you decide to watch this don't say I didn't warn you.