Love/Hate: Doom (2005)

Welcome back to the Doom Love/Hate series! We’re going on another surprise detour (or, should I say, a secret level?), this time into the realm of film: that right, we’re checking out the Doom movie from 2005! I had watched this film for the first time just over ten years ago… which, I guess, means that it was actually my first true foray into this franchise. I didn’t really like it back then, but now that I’ve played all the games and have a better understanding of what Doom “is”, I was curious to re-experience it. Would I gain a new appreciation, or is it worse than I realized at the time? Read on to find out…

Love

• The Last Twenty Minutes – Spoiler alert: Doom kind of sucks. However, the final twenty minutes are so entertaining that they save this movie from being a complete snooze:
  • For one thing, the film’s pace quickens significantly in this third act. No more dead-weight characters waiting to get killed off, the characters aren’t constantly splitting up, no endless wandering around corridors, and no more hiding the monsters off-screen… it’s time for some all-out action, baby!
  • In particular, the extended first-person shooter sequence is awesome. It’s not even remotely trying to be anything more than a carnival thrill-ride: it’s incredibly silly and cheesy, but in a very intentional way. In other words, it’s finally some fucking Doom! We get to see our Doomguy going on an absolute tear, dispatching demons in comical fashion and fighting with a goddamn chainsaw! Hell, I’ll say it: this scene captures the spirit of “Doom” better than Doom 3 did (which is particularly impressive, since this movie is directly based off that game). If the rest of the film had even half this level of personality and artistry, this would have easily been the best video game movie of all-time.*
  • In addition, the first two acts of this film are fairly self-serious, so it’s also a nice change of pace when this finale gives us some funny moments. In addition to all the comical ways Doomguy kills demons in the first-person sequence, there’s a well-executed “he’s right behind me, isn’t he?” bit, and The Rock has two great line deliveries: “Semper fi, motherfucker!” and “I’m not supposed to die!”, which always elicits a genuine belly laugh. It genuinely feels like this last act was written by an entirely different person than the rest of the film.
• Stacked Cast – You couldn’t ask for a better cast for a Doom film adaptation than what this movie brings. Early 2000s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Karl Urban, and Rosamund Pike (who would have been fresh off of her Bond girl role in Die Another Day)?! The rest of the cast also has some depth to it, with Richard Brake and Ben Daniels also putting in memorable supporting performances. None of these characters is written particularly deeply or anything, but the cast really elevate the material. Like, Rosamund Pike’s character, Sam, doesn’t have much of an arc, but her performance was good enough to keep me invested in her and want to see her make it through to the end.
• Grimm and Sam Are Siblings – Doom opens with John Grimm (Karl Urban) and Sam (Rosamund Pike) having some major tension between each other due to a past falling-out, and we’re initially led to believe that they had a bad breakup. However, it is soon revealed as a twist that Grimm and Sam are actually siblings, which flips the entire plot point on its head. The surprise is well-handled, but the real brilliance is that it means we aren’t foisted with a generic, obligatory romance subplot, which is something that should have no place in Doom. It’s an inspired twist: you still get to have an emotional throughline for the narrative, but without having to get too sappy or invested in it.

*Actually, I had to go look this up, because the direction of this sequence is so much better than anything else in the movie… and that’s because it was done entirely by a second unit director.

Mixed

• Sarge’s Heel Turn – Another clever little twist in Doom is that it’s not entirely clear who “Doomguy” is going to end up being. At first glance, it looks like it’ll be Sarge (The Rock): he’s got the right look, he gets the BFG, and The Rock was the biggest movie star in the film at this point, of course he’s Doomguy. However, when the third act rolls around, there’s absolutely no question that our Doomguy is actually John Grimm, because The Rock makes a heel turn that feels like it comes out of nowhere. Up until this point, Sarge acted rationally and professionally when leading his troops and executing their quarantine mission, but as soon as act three starts, he begins acting like a psychopath. Crazy-Rock grants this film some wild energy, and I really enjoy the performance he’s putting in here, so I can’t really say that this is something that I “Hated”, but it definitely gives you some whiplash with how quickly it happens, so I can’t say that it was particularly well-executed either.
• The Demons – Doom features a fair few classic monsters from Doom 3: zombies, Imps, Hellknights, and a Pinky demon too! The Pinky is, by far, the coolest one, brought to life with some pretty impressive CGI. Unfortunately, the rest of the demons just kind of look like poop monsters: they’ve got this weird shininess to them which just makes them look slimy and gross rather than otherworldly and menacing. The Hellknight in particular just looks disappointing. I’ll give it some kudos for being brought to life with practical effects, but the suit looks very rubbery, and it just doesn’t look like an imposing, hulking monstrosity.

Hate

• Slow Pacing – I should probably clarify that I watched the unrated cut, which adds eight minutes of new and extended scenes to the runtime, making Doom nearly two fucking hours long. I have only seen the unrated cut, so I can’t confirm if the theatrical cut is noticeably better-paced, but I don’t image it is: the bulk of this film’s runtime is just characters slowly wandering around corridors. Unfortunately, this ends up being about as dull as it sounds, with very little to hold your interest for a long stretch of the film.
• Impotent Attempts at Horror – Doom has clearly been based on the look and feel of Doom 3, and so it’s going for a sci-fi/action-horror vibe a la Aliens or Event Horizon. As a result, much of the film ends up being very un-Doom-like mystery and suspect, rather than demon-slaying action. Unfortunately, this is a wasted effort, because Doom somehow manages to be significantly less-scary than Doom 3 (which is an accomplishment, because that game was not all that scary to begin with). You’d think that the slow pacing would help build tension, but it absolutely does not. It also does not help that the film’s only real “trick” to scare the audience is fucking jump scares, but even these fail to elicit any reaction.
• Portman – No shade at Richard Brake: he’s playing this character exactly as intended, but man do you hate Portman’s guts every time he’s on-screen. He’s this slimy, weaselly little sex-pest motherfucker who probably never would have made his way into an elite response team like this… but hey, it’s a movie, who cares? Unfortunately, he survives way longer than you might expect, so you have to put up with his grossness for an agonizing amount of time, while badasses like Goat and Destroyer get picked off one-by-one.
• No Sense of Location – Doom mostly takes place on the Mars research base. This base doesn’t seem like it’s super large, but it’s kind of hard to tell, because the film does a terrible job of conveying the layout of the place. A really good action film that’s set in one place will generally give you a sense of the overall layout, so you know where characters are at any given time and what places are connected to one another. When utilized correctly, this can lead to opportunities for suspense and drama… unfortunately, Doom just feels like characters teleporting from one sci-fi corridor set to another, with no real understanding of where exactly anyone is or how far apart from each other they are.
• It’s a Resident Evil Rip-off – This movie came out three years after the success of the original Resident Evil film, so I think it’s safe to say that Doom‘s production was directly influenced it. The final film even has a similar sort of structure to it: you’ve got an elite team of soldiers being sent into a research base to clean up after an incident in the labs unleashes monsters. That’s tired ground, but it could be fine with the proper execution. However, Doom goes too far: it discards the idea that the film’s monsters are literal demons from literal hell, and instead makes them a infection that mutates people akin to Resident Evil‘s t-virus. BORING! The film makes coy references to them being demons in a metaphorical sense, but it’s such a dumb change to make. Were they worried that audiences would be turned off by supernatural foes or something…?

While I do still think that Doom is a pretty mediocre movie, and a terrible adaptation of its source material, the final twenty minutes are a blast, good enough to redeem the film overall. Hell, I’d say that this is still one of the better video game movies we’ve ever gotten so… congrats, I guess?

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Barloq

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Writer, blogger, father. Blogging since 2012, writing my whole life. Was blessed by the chupacabra and the guardian shepherd.

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