Review:

DOOM premiered to a packed house on Tuesday at a special Dallas, TX sneak preview.

WARNING: THERE ARE NO SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!

Doom the movie. I fully expected going into this movie that I would have to go home afterwards and write a bad review, but surprisingly Doom was a pretty good movie. The acting was spot on. Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) was great as Sarge, and Karl Urban did an excellent job as John Grimm (Reaper). The story was good, although I think it could have been much better if they had spent some more time in the movie to develop it more (hopefully in the sequel). They did throw a couple of twists in that I didn't see coming at first, I won't say anymore on that as to not spoil it for anyone. Even though most of the sets look like they came straight out of the Doom III video game, they did change the back-story to where it would make more sense for a stand-alone movie.

I was a bit upset that they didn't use more of the Doom monsters, but I suppose you have to narrow it down some when you only have 100 minutes of screen time and you are actually tiring to tell a coherent story in addition to blowing away a horde of Hell Beasts.

The level of gore in the movie also surprised me. It was far less than even the original Doom game back in 1993, and much less than any other hack & slash or zombie movie. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of violence and gore, just far less than I was expecting to see.

Near the end when they switch to a first person view for a few minutes as homage to the game that started it all you can tell that this movie was made for Doom fans and that the crew behind making it had some fun with it as well.

have been a fan of Doom ever since ID Software released the original game in 1993. I’ll admit like most males my age I was addicted to it, and I played Doom 2 and Quake when they first came out as well. I have not played Doom III, mainly because I just don’t have a lot of time for playing games, and I didn’t want to spend a couple hundred dollars to upgrade my video card to play it. That being said after watching the movie I find myself wanting to dig out my old Final Doom CD and play again.

If you liked the Doom Games and action movies in the vein of Aliens or Resident Evil then I think you’ll like Doom.

Rating: 7