Watching “Doom” is like attending the LAN party from hell, where the nerds are the muscle-bound tough guys they only dream they are and the stereo is only playing obnoxious heavy metal that manages to kill more brain cells than a crowbar to the head.

“Doom” is a video game adaptation in the literal sense of the word; it doesn’t just adapt the game, it adapts the culture surrounding the game. Those false-tough nerds, who are heard spewing their tough-guy ramblings during online play have become the main characters. The heroes have been given names akin to those chosen by gamers when they play, including Reaper and Destroyer. Hell, I was even expecting a character named Yo Mama to show up eventually, but to my disappointment, no dice.

“Doom” ditches it’s source material almost completely and decides instead to be a blatant rip-off of the classic “Aliens.” The original game featured a portal to Hell being discovered on the surface of Mars, and the gamer, playing as a lone Marine, having to fight his way through the forces of Satan. The series, especially the recent third entry, was ripe for cinema: action packed and completely and utterly terrifying. “Doom 3” remains to this day, the only video game to truly rattle my nerves. It felt like “The Exorcist” with a machine gun, and I mean that in a good way.

The film version does away with all references to Hell. Early in production, I read that it was because a right-wing religious group sent a petition to Universal, furious about the Satanic images and pentagrams in the game. This scared the studio into ditching this premise and coming up with a contrived “genetic mutations cause people to turn into giant monsters” plot. I find this bizarre and ironic that Universal is fine with ditching the offensive imagery, but is perfectly fine with the decapitations, disembowelments, electrocutions, executions, explosions, knifings, chainsawings and any other violent etc you can think of that remains in this film. Odd, no?

The film? Oh, yes, the film. It’s not very good. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty terrible. It is easily amongst the worst of the year, but at the same time, it never quite manages to reach a level of Uwe Boll badness (we’ll get our dose of Dr. Boll in January when “Bloodrayne” inhabits theatres for about a week or so). When “Doom” is being slow, it’s being stupid. Thankfully, the stupid moments contain a goofy sort of unintentional schlockiness that makes it entirely watchable. Stars Karl Urban and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson both display a good deal of charisma, and I only wished that I was seeing them in a better film. The Rock could be a great movie star if he picked his films better…I love watching this guy!

The action is your typical “quick cut strobe light audience gets a seizure” type, with the exception of the quickly infamous first person sequence. The film suddenly goes to the perspective of the hero, complete with a gun protruding from the corner of the screen and we “play the movie” as the camera goes throughout corridors and gun blows apart zombies and vicious beasties. The results are bloody, vicious and ultimately numbing. The overall effect is akin to watching your buddy play Doom over his shoulder, or, if you take the lousy heavy metal musical score into account, the entire thing feels like a bad game of laser tag.

Like the infamous “House of the Dead,” though, I am not telling you to stay away from “Doom” is the opportunity arises for you to see it for free. Certainly, don’t spend any money on it (I used a coupon), but see it with some buddies and revel in it’s badness. It’s certainly not offensive, and there are a good many wisecracks that can be made from it.

For example, did you know, that in the year 2046, they apparently forgot that we have mapped the human genome in 2003?

Oh, the laughs.
 

© Written by Jacob Hall

How We Rated This Film TC Candler -     Richard Propes -     Jacob Hall - D

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