Review DOOM

Review: DOOM

When Doom first came out I was not a PC owner, so I couldn't play it much; only on visits to my mate's house. I never really got too far through the game, but I'll never forget the effect it could have. Running through dark virtual corridors, never knowing when the next creature attack was coming. You always knew when they were close as you could hear them growling in the distance, catch fleeting glimpses of them around corners and the tension was a world away from the games we had played before. Prior to Doom this type of first-person game required the computer to re-draw the screen after each step taken. One button press took you one pace forward or turned you through 90° and it could become very disorientating. Often the games were as much exercises in mapping as they were in hunting monsters.

Doom was something new. The story was pants, but it was a game and it really only existed as an excuse to run around shooting things. The fact that your character actually had to die at one point to get to hell and continue hunting demons just made it clear how silly the whole enterprise really was. Yet, somehow the effect was more immediate and visceral than any horror movie I had ever watched. I got more genuine scares from turning around a corner and being jumped by a monster I didn't know was there than I ever got in a cinema. There were moments of tension creeping along a corridor listening to those growls that even Hitchcock couldn't have improved upon. Doom was something new and special.

It's been bettered in the gaming world since, even re-made for new, more powerful computers. Now, like many successful gaming franchises it has spawned a movie. In a world where movies of games are uniformly pants (and, oddly enough the reverse is also true, games of movies are usually awful) and totally fail to capture what it was about the original that made it special in the  first place, could Doom once more break the mould?

The short answer is; yes.

Now don't go getting too excited. This is not any great cinematic experience. It's not a classic movie, maybe not even a particularly good one. But it does capture the game rather well in that the story's pants and only there as an excuse for several set-piece action sequences and some running around in corridors.

Oh, it's got the usual cinematic conceits, the dumb voice-over to explain the premise for the hard of thinking at the beginning, the compulsion to turn it into an accident caused by genetic experimentation and to stick really unnecessary character conflicts and stereotypes in at every conceivable moment. The dialogue is clunky, often badly delivered and 'The Rock' is a frequent offender in this category. (Odd how he seems to have given up on trying to get people to use his real name, isn't it?) The film is clearly targeted at what the producers think is a typical games-playing audience of teenage boys who listen to death metal. There are several in-jokes about games & gaming. Constant references to things like "getting my game face on." soon become wearing though. Calling one of the characters 'Duke' just has to be referring to one of Doom's rivals/imitators, Duke Nukem.

The game's monsters all make an appearance, though none seem to be able to spit fireballs like they can in the game and having made them genetic mutations instead of demons leaves the audience unsure why there are different types. Indeed, this seemingly minor change leads to many instances of bad science. Apparently, having an extra chromosome pair would turn you into a superhuman, smarter, faster, stronger and able to heal instantly and injecting blood from an alien who has such an extra chromosomal pairing will result in a spontaneous mutation in homo sapiens and it can tell if you're good or evil and turn you into a super-soldier or a monster accordingly.

One of the big things about Doom was getting bigger and better weapons to deal with bigger and badder monsters. To fit in with the action movie requirement of buff action heroes stripped to the waist punching the living daylights out of one another, there seems to be no real need for the likes of the BFG (yes, it does mean what you think). The monsters, true to the game, stay in the dark, are rarely seen clearly and as a result don't look unrealistic. Something many other users of cgi could do with heeding.

One sequence of the film takes the viewer into the experience of playing Doom by adopting the first person perspective and running through what appears to be a section of the game, including what happens when you die in it. It's all there: the re-loading sequence, the swaying as you run, the occasional glimpses of yourself in reflective surfaces and an appearance of the infamous chainsaw. It's totally cheesy, but it works. Med-packs and even the booster drugs make an appearance, too.

That is, in the end, what makes this film work. It knows what it is, it doesn't try to be something better than that and it makes the most of its strengths. It's good fun, it has a couple of good scares and gross-out moments and it passes away a couple of hours in over the top fantasy. You didn't play Doom expecting depth, characterisation and coherent thought. If you don't expect them from the movie you'll be happy enough.

I liked it.

One coda to that is the scene in which a character self-harms. I think it's there in some feeble attempt to appeal to that sad goth stereotype that the producers tried to appeal to. Lots of kids do that these days, so they'll think it's cool, right? Kids who self-harm don't need to see that being portrayed as acceptable and even noble behaviour.


Here’s a new feature for my reviews. I love nit-picking at crappy logic in films. You know, like in Highlander 2 where Macleod gets Ramirez back from the dead just by calling for him. If he could do that why didn’t he do it in all the time up to now if he missed him so much? Stuff like that. So here’s the new bit:

Things that don't make sense

1. 'Duke' has been estranged from his sister for 10 years. She is unaware of his marine nickname until she hears it used. So why is it the only thing she ever calls him?

2. You can't pull your own ear off. There's not enough traction, especially when covered in blood.

3. When designing a holding cell that's a pit in the ground, putting in electrified walls to stop the prisoner climbing out is a good idea. Hanging chains from the ceiling into the pit that can be climbed up is not.

4. When holding someone against said electrified wall the electricity will not only zap them in the real world it will get you, too.

5. Firing a really big gun you’ve never seen or used before is a bad idea. Especially when you have no idea what the ammunition is/does and you are in an enclosed space. You never know where that explosion’s going to go.

6. Genes have no idea if you’re good or bad. They don’t actually have any equipment for making moral judgments. Trusting a scientist who wants to inject you with an experimental drug whose only proven effect is to turn the previous recipients into freaky flesh-eating monsters just because she’s your sister means you probably shouldn’t have the right to say no to being a guinea-pig in the first place.

7. Just having a higher number of chromosomes than Homo sapiens does not actually mean that you will be smarter, faster, stronger and able to heal instantaneously. Not even if you are an alien. It is unlikely that scientists would be able to create a serum from that chromosome that will make Homo sapiens smarter, faster, stronger and able to heal instantaneously. Especially not without more extensive testing than putting it into a convicted murderer.

7a. Even if the above rubbish did turn out to be true why is it that at the end of the film there are suddenly many zombies attacking the soldiers? What’s the explanation for them, then? Are they the people who weren’t either good, altruistic, all-American boys or murdering, goat-raping psychopaths? (See the problems you create when you don’t want to upset the bible-belt and take the demons out of the story?)

8. Just because a soldier is new to your unit and younger than the rest of you does not mean that he will be issued with a smaller gun than everyone else. The military gives everyone the same crap, in the same colour and the same size. Unless you’re a 5-star general. Then you get pretty much whatever you want.

9. The military tend not to programme electronic equipment with your nickname. Especially not when even you don’t know it yet. Your name, rank and serial number, yes. What the rest of the boys in your squad call you, no.

10. Where does the female doctor suddenly materialise from? She’s never been mentioned and she’s in a med-bay in the section where everyone else is dead.

11. Why is it that everyone in this film is a bloody American? Even the non-American actors pretend they are, too. Okay, maybe the RRTS are some part of the American military, though that’s not stated. But the corporation who own the base on Mars are likely to be a multi-national and will have staff from all over. In the game the same company employs you as the scientists.