Doom: Annihilation – Bring back ‘The Rock’


I really wanted to like this film.  I love the ‘Doom’ computer games.  I love B-movies and I even found some small enjoyment in the first ‘Doom’ movie.  I felt I was in a pretty ‘forgiving’ mood when I sat down to watch the latest movie based on a video game, ‘Doom: Annihilation.’ I tried so hard to like it.  I figured that – at worst – it would be a bit of a ‘cheese-fest’ and I could enjoy it on a ‘it’s-so-bad-it’s-good’ kind of way.  I was wrong.  It’s just bad.


For those who don’t know, the ‘Doom’ franchise (both on computer and film) centres around Mars being overrun by demons and a lone soldier having to gun his way through their hordes.  It’s hardly ‘Shakespeare,’ but in the right hands you can probably turn it into a decent enough action flick.  Unfortunately, it looks like ‘Doom: Annihilation’ wasn’t made by ‘the right hands.’


From the opening scene you can tell that it’s cheap.  The external sets (of space stations etc) are obviously done on computers.  Then we’re treated to the scene where the scientists unleash something pretty nasty.  Only they can’t act.  Or, if that’s a bit unfair on the actors, they can’t act a decent scene with the script they’ve been saddled with.  Jump across to Earth and we meet our ‘heroes.’ Only, if you’ve seen the infinitely-superior ‘Aliens’ you’ll already know the character types – a bunch of space marines.  Only with ‘Aliens’ you actually cared about them.  Here they’re just a bunch of stereotypes from diverse nationalities.  Oh, and ‘Doom Guy’ is a woman now.  A lot of people on the internet objected to that.  I would have had no problem if the lead actress actually had charisma, but she – like everyone else on the cast list – doesn’t.


I could go on about the lack of budget – the uniforms look cheap, the guns that are supposed to be big and powerful look like they’ve been made out of cardboard.  The actors all seem to be putting on accents which don’t match up to – clearly – their own natural accent.  But the bottom line is that you’ve probably seen it all before.  I kind of enjoyed the first ‘Resident Evil’ film.  I could see it was a sort of rip-off of (again!) ‘Aliens’ only with zombies, now ‘Doom: Annihilation’ seems to be a rip-off of a rip-off, only with space zombies instead of the undead type or xenomorphs.


Yeah, there are quite a few nods to the computer game this was based on – and that’s nice, but it’s not enough to save this from looking, sounding and generally being one of the most cheap films ever made.  It’s a case of the film-makers clearly didn’t have the budget to do the source material justice, so they should have just left well alone.  My advice – just stick to playing the computer games.


5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back