Doom (Theatrical)

2005 • 104 minutes

About this movie

Based on the hit videogame, this action-packed adventure begins when a call for help from a research station on Mars sends a team of mercenary Marines, led by The Rock, into action.

Ratings and reviews

Loosely based on the popular first-person shooter game, "Doom" is pretty much what I expected it to be; it's basically just an army of soldiers shooting at hideous monsters on Mars that the humans mutated into and really nothing else. I was not truly entertained or thrilled by it that much. Andrzej Bartkowiak directed this film, and usually the best part of his direction is that he did a great job letting our guard down until the tone exploded to high volume for a jumpscare to deliver the shock value. There is nothing else that Bartkowiak had to offer. Heck, the movie itself has nothing to offer as well, there is nothing to it, and it does not offer much except for the sequence in the third act that actually plays like an actual first-person shooter game because of that one long shot that the camera is rolling for. There is even a cool plot twist leading to an interesting climax, showing me that Reaper is the protagonist who is the real hero of Mars and Sarge is the antagonist who will kill innocent people for what he does as a soldier. The movie has two celebrities that I recognize like Karl Urban who plays Reaper and Dwayne Johnson or The Rock who plays Sarge. They both play macho soldiers in a military army called the Rapid Response Tactical Squad. The characters are one-dimensional; no depth, no layers, nothing fleshed-out, and quite forgettable. Some of the cheesy dialogue needs some improvement and some of the acting performances are just cringy (now that is some bad acting). The production design is amazing enough to intrigue me and the special effects (not to mention the visual effects) are impressive. The score is by an English musician named Clint Mansell, and his score is quite impressive, The action cues has that musical sounding hybrid between electronic and heavy metal, but there are also some music cues that sound tender from either an orchestra or on synth. To conclude: There is not much to say about this movie adaptation of the popular video game and I was not entertained by it that much, because the entire enterprise is stale, superficial, and mindless.

Has absolutely no plot relation to the game outside of the title. Just "The Rock's" face plastered all over the place. Skip it and use the time saved to do something more productive, like trim your toenails.

I don't quite understand this all that much. In the games, the demons come from Hell when the UAC is trying to gather energy from Hell to use it here on Earth, and in the movie, they... messed with DNA? I'm sorry? Doom never surrounded a team of marines, just the one single Doom Marine -- or DoomGuy, or Doom Slayer, whatever you wanna call him. Personally, I wasn't particularly big on Doom 3, so seeing a horror-type atmosphere in some of these places in the film was jarring and quite frankly not well-done. As for the acting... not even throwing The Rock at this was able to make a dent in how awful the acting is. The characters are one-dimensional and, quite honestly, annoying. Yes, some of the effects were cool, but the most interesting part for me was merely the first-person scenes, which everyone here seems to agree with. Now, all in all, save your money and don't even rent this. If you're looking for a good old Doom experience, might I recommend the classic games or the 2016 reboot?