DOOM

I'm not a really big fan of the games, and I haven’t actually finished any of them. I played the demo of Doom 2, and played Doom 3 for about five hours before I got stuck and fed up with it crashing all the time. That said, the games are still good. The movie wasn’t. I’m not really in a position to say for sure if the movie lives up to what one would expect from the games. But I'm going to say this, the movie is not good, cant possibly remind anyone of the games, or make fans of the game feel like the move is what they wanted, and you might as well spend the one and a half hour of the movies length on playing the games or se another action move.

=SPOILERS=

OK, so the story is simple. A research facility on Mars get a situation where some scientist disappear in the research complex, and other strange things happen. So they send in the strike team, lead by The Rock who plays the character Sarge, to clear up the situation. The arrive on Mars start to examine the place and sooner enough, the team of eight people, start to loose members, one after another. There are some monsters suddenly appearing, and it’s soon discovered that they are mutated humans that have been injected with a extra chromosome that either turn humans into monsters, or “super humans”. The scientists have also been infected and turned into monsters. The strike team clear the place out, but one monster gets through the portal that leads from Mars back to Earth. The team is reduced to about half and they get back to Earth to deal with the situation to try to stop the monster to escape through the elevator that leads to the surface as that would be the potential end of man kind.

Sarge orders the remaining members of his team to kill everyone at the base, one of them refuse and gets shot by Sarge. Remaining are him, John Grimm (played by actor Karl Urban) and his sister Samantha (played by actress Rosamund Pike) who was the scientist that discovered the secret behind the project to genetically mutate people. Monsters have appeared and after a while John gets hit by a ricochet bullet, and in order to save him, Samantha injects him with a chromosome sample she brought with her, and when he wakes up later on, he is a super human that starts to kill all monsters in sight form the now infamous First Person camera angle sequence. He soon encounter Sarge who appears to have been infected, but haven’t turned a monster yet. So they start a fight, a battle between the good and bad side of the secret project. Soon enough, Sarge mutates into an almost complete monster, but John manage to kick him back through the portal to Mars and throws a grenade after him that supposedly destroy the base on Mars. The move ends with John going up through the elevator towards earth’s surface with his wounded sister in his hands.

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That is the basic story of the move. There isn’t more to it really. So, I basically think that the move is kind of decent in some areas, but there are way too much that make it fall apart. First of is the one dimensional members of the strike team that gets almost no interesting character development, and it almost only focus on Sarge and John, and his sister, for the most part. The first half-hour of the movie is the most boring, as nothing really happens. The story is presented of course, but for the most part they are just sneaking around the facility on Mars, going through badly lit corridors with crappy flashlights attached to their weapons that don’t make anyone se anything. After a while, the monsters show up, but as they start shoot at them, they are already gone so nothing really happens, and this happens over and over, often involving some member of the strike team getting killed in one more or less horrible way.

The action takes up about halfway through, but it’s repetitive and uninteresting. Some of them mutate and they whole genetic experiment thing is revealed and explained. Its not really original or anything makes perfect sense as they only explain a few things on how the virus works, an it makes me wonder if its Resident Evil 3 I’m watching. The survival horror feeling is there, but not something that if built up to enough to make you surprised when something happen at all.

The end is probably the highlight though, but even that is really mediocre most of the time. As John (or Reaper as his codename is) turns into a super human the FPS sequence start and its really cool and a concept that they made work... the first minute or two. It last about 5 to 10 minutes to tall and it is basically one long sequence... in with they make some strange cuts that make no sense as its supposed to be, well... from Johns eyes, so it only makes you confused. That is only in one part of the sequence though, and the rest of walking around the corridors blowing up monsters is quite enjoyable, but confusing and not as flexible as you would want. There is also a part where he picks up a chainsaw, that appear out of nowhere for no apparent reason, and have a longer fight sequence with some dog like mutant where he gets bitten over and over.

There ids a neat plot twist, of sorts, where you think that The Rock is the main character and then he turns out to be a real bastard and in the end turn into a half monster and get to fight the new main character, Karl Urban. It was a bit unexpected and the fight was quite good, but to dragged out and to obvious. Also the infamous BFG weapon is in the move, and used about two or three times, and not in focus or anything that contribute anything to the move at all.

The movie doesn’t feel like a Doom move at all. It reminded me a lot more of Resident Evil if anything, and although some parts are quite good, the move falls apart for being dragged out, slow and most of all, the story don’t grip you enough to make it feel like you care much about the characters. I would not waste time on the movie unless you want to se it as a fan of the games and don’t care if it’s good or not, or if you like action movies with some survival horror in it.