Guest Author - Kirsten Olsen-Keyser

The original storyline of the Doom video game was very simple. You are the only person left on the Mars moon of Phobos after teleportation experiments between Phobos and Deimos go terribly wrong. Hellish demons emerge from the teleportation gate and take over the moon station. Everyone is either dead, dying or zombified. Your mission: to get out alive!

It’s a simple plot, one that could easily translate onto the big screen; so you would think. Regrettably, Holly-would constantly destroys simple ideas by overcomplicating them until a script is merely based on a video game or book. In other words, they only use the copyrighted material and throw away the rest. For fans of the video game expecting to see essentials such as imps throwing fireballs or floating cacodemons, you will be disappointed. This movie seems more like the fusion of Doom and its popular counterpart, Quake. Ironically, Trent Reznor and NIN lent their music to the end credits of Doom the movie, the very same band that produced all the sounds and music for the Quake series.

The premise of Doom is as follows. Archaeologists have discovered an ancient portal to Mars in the Nevada desert which they name “The Ark”. For years, research goes well at the Olduvai Research Facility owned by the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), until “something” rears its ugly head. People die horribly and a distress message is sent signaling an elite Marine force to the rescue. Naturally, they are being called away from a well deserved leave or we wouldn’t feel sorry for them. Their mission is to search and destroy. Our band of merry haymakers is made up of the same old tired personalities. There is the big guy, Sarge (The Rock); the “Doomguy” with a chip on his shoulder, Reaper (Karl Urban); the likeable smooth talker, Duke (Raz Adoti); the strong, quiet, tank, Destroyer (Deobia Oparei); the expendable guy, Mac (Yao Chin); the fresh, young guy aptly named, The Kid (Al Weaver); the guy we clap for when he dies horribly, Portman (Richard Brake) and last but not least, the disturbed religious guy, Goat (Ben Daniels). Throw in a lady in distress who perhaps knows more than she is letting on in Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pike) and the stage is set for a somewhat bloody, unnerving battle of good against evil.
There are few copy cat moments such as the troupe being fitted with “kill cams” Aliens style, lights going out in the middle of a tense moment or the famous clip of bullets falling out of the gun just when you need them.

Doom fans will be happy to see the BFG a.k.a. Bio-Force Gun (most of us know it by another name) although its effect is a large, blue corrosive ball rather than the green blast in the game. The chainsaw does make an appearance albeit brief.

The pace of the movie seems just right and there are plenty of jolts as creatures pop around darkened corridors picking off our heroes one by one. The music is on point and sounds like a refined rock version of the original scores used in the game. There is quite a bit of gore such as a doctor ripping off his own ear, nudity in the uncut version of the DVD and enough cursing to make a Marine proud.

However, the real treat is in the first person point of view toward the end of the film. Fans of the game will be pleasantly surprised by the quality and care of this sequence and the DVD is worth buying just to see how they pulled it off! It is the most frightening piece of the picture if not the best part.
Overall, the plot of Doom may not live up to the expectations of hard core gamers, but it is well worth a look just for the last 10 minutes of the film!

Director : Andrzej Bartkowiak
Writers : Dave Callaham and Wesley Strick
Rated: R for violence, language, partial nudity

Trivia: Two scientists, Carmack and Willits, are named for id Software staff, however; sadly there was no homage to Lead Designer John Romero.