This movie should have been the "Aliens" of the 21st century. The Phobos base should have appeared dank and deserted, save the occasional body. The atmosphere should have built to an unbearable, silent tension. Then, and only then, the hideous creatures from hell should have started climbing out of walls and from under floors, and devouring the marines.
But instead, the set of the base was boring (the film looked like it was shot in a single corridor). The atmosphere wasn't scary enough. The monsters were, frankly, pathetic. A guy in a rubber alien suit covered in KY jelly to make him look slimy may have worked 30 years ago, but not now. Where were the horrific bio-mechanical perversions of nature that characterised doom? (i.e. Spider Demon). Where was the demonic imagery? The torsos hanging from spikes in the ceiling? The five pointed stars painted on the floor in blood?
The plot had nothing to do with the original games. The whole "24th chromosome" thing was actually less believable than a portal to hell, and undermined the tension when you found out that the creatures were actually human (once).
There was no point to the film. No objective. Just people walking round corridors with guns. That may make a good game, but a film needs more than that. Even in Doom 3 (the game) there is a series of objectives, i.e. crossing the base to get to the transmitter and call for help. That's what this game needed - an objective for the marines to accomplish other than killing things. Without this, the film rambles on and the dialogue is superfluous, with no influence on the storyline whatsoever.
I wonder if the producers of this film have actually every played Doom. The film did a fantastic job of incorporating none of the atmosphere of the games. It wasn't scary enough, it wasn't gory enough, and it wasn't evil enough.
To summarise: it was crap. And I'm gutted :-x
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moto
