Doom feels like it could’ve been a direct-to-DVD outing, save for the decent CGI and some high-profile casting. I saw this thing not long after it came out and haven’t watched it since, but it was even worse than I remembered. The presence of Rock “The Dwayne” Johnson and Karl Urban is the only thing that makes this dull, juvenile, mess of a film watchable.
The costumes and props are cheap, looking like they could’ve come from any generic military scifi film. The sets are claustrophobic, with the our one glance at the Doom 3 inspired martian surface only serving to highlight the fact that the entire movie seems to take place in the same half dozen rooms. Also, why is everything blue and black? I realize which entry they were cribbing from visually, but the games as a whole were generally quite colorful. This limited palette just heightens the cheapness of the whole thing. At least the monsters look alright in motion, if a bit rubbery in closeup.
Everyone remembers this movie for two things: The Rock delivering his infamous “Semper fi, motherfucker!” with such painfully bad timing that it comes off as a missed cue that was left in for time, and the first person sequence. Let me tell you, that FPS part doesn’t really hold up. At the time, it was cool and novel, the one redeeming part of a disappointing movie, but these days it just feels like a you’re watching someone go through an elaborate haunted house while holding a camera at about chest level. The whole scene is poorly paced and feels like Karl Urban’s character is just wandering aimlessly through a very small section of the base for five minutes while looking for things to kill. In that respect I suppose it’s very accurate to classic Doom.
I appreciate the difficulty in making something out of nothing while adapting such a legendary IP to the big screen. To be fair, the standards for video game movies were still rock bottom at this time, and the source material doesn’t exactly provide much to work with in terms of story. It isn’t surprising that the movie does its own thing aside from cribbing a few details from Doom 3, but somehow the story here is somehow even thinner and more idiotic than a game series that isn’t exactly known for its riveting narrative.