Doom
Studio: Sony Pictures Releasing, Universal Pictures Distr
Rated: R
Website: http://www.doommovie.com/
Release Date: 2005-10-21
Cast: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Ben Daniels, Razaaq Adoti
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Screenwriter: Wesley Strick, David Callaham
WorkNameSort: Doom
Our Rating: 1.00
Doom‘s plot barely warrants a sentence, and most of that comes courtesy of Aliens. Some Marines led by The Rock go to a Mars colony, where genetically modified Things are killing people. The Marines kill the Thing’s neck-raped spawn (don’t ask) until all the black characters are dead and the one female character lies prettily unconscious. What the movie lacks in story, it makes up for in cost-cutting: It’s mostly shot in dark, endlessly redressed hallways, and its advertised beast is never fully shown. The reason for the budgetary thrift is revealed in a last-reel conflation of plot elements about a Martian gene that turns one Marine into an evil-sniffing, pulp-Nietzschean superman. That allows director Andrzej Bartkowiak to switch to video-game first person for a you’re-the-killer!-style, orgiastic, nü-metal-scored symphony of righteous slaughter. Nice.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2005.