In the movie's past, a portal was discovered in the Nevada desert that led to an ancient city on Mars. Yes, you read that right. Anyway, in the movie's present, researchers are still investigating this ancient city and send out a distress signal when they're suddenly attacked by monsters of some sort. A squad of eight marines, led by "Sarge" (played by Dwayne Johnson), is sent to retrieve research data, kill the attackers, and rescue any survivors, pretty much in that order.

One member of the squad, called "Reaper," turns out to be the twin brother of one of the researchers, Dr. Samantha Grimm. As the team investigates the facility, they gradually realize what really happened to all the other researchers and what might now be threatening Earth.

My only familiarity with the Doom franchise is the original game, which I watched my dad play a lot when I was younger. I have no idea what sort of lore has since been built around the franchise, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this movie was only loosely based on any of it. I knew that this movie had a fairly bad reputation, but since I don't have any real attachment to the game franchise, I thought I'd probably be in the best position to enjoy the movie for what it was.

Unfortunately, "what it was" happened to be pretty mediocre. It certainly didn't help that one of the characters was so unpleasant that I found myself wishing one of his teammates would take mercy on all of us and just shoot him.

There was really only one monster in the whole movie that I thought showed any sort of creativity. For the most part, the action scenes weren't particularly memorable, and the primary links to the Doom franchise seemed to be some of the weapons and a scene filmed like a live-action first person shooter sequence that went on way longer than it should have. The most unique aspect of the movie was that there was no attempt at romance and the main male and female characters were siblings.

Extras:

There were several, and I watched none of them.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )