BEFORE: 7 films in a row is a LOT for any actor - and in any other year, maybe Dwayne Johnson (carrying over from "Rampage") would have a shot at being the person with the most screen appearances this year. But this is not a normal year - doing a month of documentaries means that he will be topped by several U.S. Presidents, including Barack Obama and Richard Nixon. Still, his 8 films (counting tomorrow's) will probably put him up near the top of the list, somewhere near James Franco.
THE PLOT: Space Marines are sent to investigate strange events at a research facility on Mars but find themselves at the mercy of genetically enhanced killing machines.
AFTER: Because "Rampage" and "Doom" are both based on video games, get it? But one's an arcade game from the 80's and one's a more recent first-person shooter, I know. Look, this one was never going to be Shakespeare, I just want to take this one for whatever it's worth and move on, OK?
This one's a lot like "The Thing", or maybe those tense parts of "Alien" with a group of people in an enclosed space being stalked by a killer creature, or maybe creatures, only it's set on Mars rather than in Antarctica or on a spaceship. And conveniently there's a process by which people get from Earth to Mars and back super-quick, and that's got something to do with an ancient civilization that apparently lived on one planet and had a summer home on the other. And the people of that civilization had an extra chromosome, which is important somehow - look, the science here is junk, it just doesn't matter. It's just a set-up to get a bunch of people into these dark corridors where they can shoot up a bunch of monsters before getting eaten by other monsters. Right?
This bunch of Interplanetary Marines, aka "Space Force", is sent on a rescue mission to the lab on Mars, where scientists and archaeologists have been working on experiments that will totally benefit mankind, and in NO WAY end up turning them into flesh-eating zombies. And one of the Marines just happens to be the brother of one of the female scientists, and they're sort of estranged, because of something that happened to their parents years ago on Mars that couldn't possibly be related to the creatures that are plaguing the lab at the current moment.
There's a sequence 2/3 of the way through that totally replicates the P.O.V. style of the video-game, but I think it's totally warranted by the script. Still, they managed to incorporate all of the excitement of the videogame, with exactly none of the interactivity. We're still WATCHING stuff happen to other people instead of feeling like it's happening to us, and that our actions are making a difference.
Years later, somebody made a sequel to this film, starring none of the same actors, and it was apparently released this week, it's called "Doom: Annihilation", and it seems like it's received zero publicity, I wasn't even aware of it until today. Yeah, that's not a good sign either.
Honestly, I fell asleep about an hour into this film, and I had to force myself awake (and take my last hit of Mountain Dew) in order to be able to finish. That's a bad sign for an action movie. As a result I was then wide awake at 5 am, could not get to sleep until about 7 am. This does not bode well for later this week, when I'll have to get up at 7:30 to leave the house at 8 to be at my office at 9 and Comic-Con before 10. Somehow I've got to figure out how to get myself on a more regular sleeping schedule before Thursday night.
Also starring Karl Urban (last seen in "Pete's Dragon"), Rosamund Pike (last seen in "Hostiles"), Razaaq Adoti, Richard Brake (last seen in "The Sisters Brothers"), Dexter Fletcher (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Al Weaver (last seen in "Me and Orson Welles"), Ben Daniels (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), DeObia Oparei, Yao Chin, Robert Russell, Brian Steele, Doug Jones (last seen in "Crimson Peak").
RATING: 4 out of 10 proximity mines
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