Main cast: The Rock (Sarge), Karl Urban (John Grimm), Rosamund Pike (Samantha Grimm), Ben Daniels (Goat), Raz Adoti (Duke), Richard Brake (Corporal Dean Portman), Al Weaver (The Kid), Dexter Fletcher (Pinky), Brian Steele (Hell Knight), DeObia Oparei (Destroyer), Yao Chin (Mac), and Robert Russell (Dr Carmack)
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak

Doom is based on the popular video game Doom 3. I haven’t played any of the games in that franchise, but my son told me that this movie’s script follows that game pretty closely. Anyway, this movie is pretty much what I expected it to be: completely unoriginal, very stupid, and yet, satisfyingly entertaining to watch all the same.

In the future, we have found a portal from Earth to Mars, which makes it so much easier for people like mad scientists to set up base in Mars and do naughty things in the depths of their maze-like laboratories. This is exactly what happens in this movie: a bunch of researchers had become too naughty, and now something… things, maybe… are loose in the underground laboratory. Because there is a genuine danger of those… things… reaching Earth via the portal, we have our Special Operations Team of clichés, led by Sarge, to exterminate those things before those things break loose from the laboratory.

Apart from the usual minorities and new kids and religious blokes who will play the exact roles that they have played in every movie featuring those stereotypes, we also have Reaper, who is there to exorcise some demons and save his sister, one of the researchers determined to retrieve some data from the laboratory. He is the only one with anything remotely a personality, so it’s a no-brainer that he’s the good guy.

Ripping off, er, “influenced” by every science-fiction action movie featuring monsters you can think of, Doom is a bloated and unbelievably stupid movie featuring lots of special effects and ridiculous dialogues. There is even a scene where the movie morphs into a first person shooter sequence. It’s all so cheesy and ridiculous. But despite the fact that there is nothing even remotely original here, the pacing is fine and the movie delivers plenty of appropriate violence and gore. Dwayne Johnson, also known as The Rock when he’s in spandex and grappling other greasy men in the WWE ring, carries his role with enjoyable aplomb while Karl Urban looks as if he is seeing his career getting flushed down the toilet as the movie progresses.

Hilarious, ridiculous, and so cheesy, Doom is prime entertainment for both right and wrong reasons.