Summary of review in three words: more gore needed.

Unfortunately for those of us who actually wanted the chaotic experience of playing the game accurately transmitted to the silver screen Doom just comes up short in the total carnage department. Don’t know if the gore was scaled back so they didn’t receive an NC-17 rating or what, but there is only a 15 minute or so stretch where Doom actually recreates the comin’ atcha, shoot all that moves, let’s rock and roll, true video game Doom experience. Sure there is death throughout, but not enough, not fast enough, not enough to shock or scare this viewer.

We took our family of five and our son’s friend tonight to see Doom and the snacks cashed in at $52 and the tickets were $49.75 for a total moviegoer experience of $101.75. We caugh the 7pm showing and arrived 25 minutes before the scheduled showtime, which of course wasn’t the actual showtime. The movie rolled at 7:15pm. I wanted to break out BFG after watching The Twenty and a gadzillion previews, but that’s the price of admisssion to get a decent seat on a feature film’s opening day.

Doom begins with some background that a short date in the future a portal to Mars underground has been discovered. They call this portal the Ark and it is a gelatinous cube that expands and sucks in people and sends them to Mars. The trip is so sickeningly bumpy that everyone that goes through is puking on the other side. Keep your stomach empty travellers.

The Rock plays Sarge who leads a band of soldiers through the Ark to Mars to assist a scientist in recovering some data and investigating and securing the site. One of several problems with Doom is that it takes the something is coming feeling too far; it overplays the suspense and that ruins the pacing. It’s not that unsettling or creepy or even fast action as a preview had promised because not enough attacks happen soon enough. It’s more like a bunch of heavily armed soldiers going around expecting something to jump out and scare so they can shoot it all to hell … and it takes. Too. Long.

One of the side characters is a scientist who in the past didn’t make it through the Ark all the way and have is body is machine and the other man. They leave this guy guarding the station at one point because there is nobody else. There is even a rather tasteless “gimp” reference by one of the soldiers. This is the second movie I’ve seen this year that had a character cruelly making fun of a handicapped person (the godawful remake of Bad News Bears was the other). Somebody in the theater behind us laughed at this. Sad, not scary. Definitely not funny. Fortunately, cosmic justice works well in the Doom landscape.

Missing from Doom is those cool, fireball throwing demons. The film leaves several cool Doom baddies out which is wasted opportunity. They certainly weren’t spending celluloid building up characters very much, so they should have taken that time to put in more carnage and capitalize on the first person shooter. They did a little bit of that, but it comes too late and there isn’t enough. Also, no health packs and there wasn’t any finding new weapons except for Sarge and the BFG. The problem with that sequence is why would they call up reinforcements and not give these guys full access to the best guns?

Doom 3, the game, had an intriguing story slowing and mysteriously unfolding through the video tapes left behind by the scientists and emails to check but there was only one video scene explaining what has happened on Mars. No, I won’t spoil the explanation for where these creatures in the movie came from, but I will say the explanation didn’t scare or unsettle me like playing Doom 3 in the dark for the first time.

Doom plays just a little too safe for my liking, not as hellish as hoped for to match the dark ambience of the game. As far as video game to movies go, it’s the best I’ve ever seen in that respect, but that’s not a huge compliment considering past movies like Super Mario Brothers. Grade: B-

Did this post make you go hmm?

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