Something has gone wrong on Mars, and the only response is a highly trained team of marine misfits who have to give up their leave to kick some demon backside.

As an action flick, it was OK. As a game tie-in, it was OK. Not really special, except the fact that it was Doom, instead of, say, Generic Horror Action Adventure the Movie.

To be fully honest, I've never really been a fan of the Doom series of games. I know it makes me a horrible gamer, but I've been more of a Valve fan than an Id fan, and have followed the path of the Freeman. But I'm always willing to give anything a fair shake, and as I didn't have anything else pressing on my schedule, and Doom was on TV, I thought I'd give it a try.

My initial thought was that, as a Doom non-fan, I would be able to give a more un-biased review of the movie, as compared to someone who was a screaming fan. Post-movie, I feel that I would have enjoyed it more, perhaps, if I was a fan of the games, because otherwise is was actually kinda lame.

First off, I liked the level of gore in the movie. I mean, it's Doom. You've gotta have blood. But it wasn't over-the-top fire hose blood coating the walls. In a statement that seems kinda silly as I think of it to type it... it was an "appropriate" level of blood. Enough to make the point, not enough to make my popcorn sour.

Second off, it looked to me that the movie made appropriate homages to the game, without big flashy callouts saying "LOOK IT'S THE BFG!!! OMG HOW COOL IS THAT!" Sure, the Marine Sergeant coveted the gun, but that's exactly what you'd expect a Hollywood Standard Marine to do in that situation.

Thirdly, most of the more horrible acts of ... horror, took place off camera. So you didn't have to witness mass slaughter of civilians, you just took it for granted when you saw all the corpses. Again, any overt mass killings would have just distracted from the movie itself without adding anything to it. Again, it's a horror flick with demons fighting their way through a glorified museum, so you expect lots of death.

But the movie played out like... stock footage of an Action flick. The characters were (dare I make the pun) 2.5 D... just full enough for them to be distinct, but not enough that you really ever cared for any of them. (Only one marine did I care about when he bought it, but then again, he had enough screentime to make us like him and wasn't a complete asshole (see below)). And, for an action flick, you expect that. But there was opportunity to build on the characters, opportunity which was lost.

The marines in this movie were either silent redshirts or huge assholes... something that just really made me yawn. One marine I was counting the minutes until I could see him eaten. Perhaps this was designed to show contrast between "The Kid" and John, who were decent, and Sarge, who was the epitome of assholes. Interestingly enough, reading up on the backstory of Doom from Wikipedia, some of the really annoying bits of the movie, such as (SPOILER!) Sarge ordering The Kid to wipe out a room of clean survivors because "those are the orders." It was an attempt to fold in the backstory of the game into the action of the game.

I'd like to give the movie something more than a MEH. I mean, it didn't put me to sleep, but frankly the only reason I watched it through was because there wasn't anything better on the Food Network. It was bland and cookie cutter. The characters were pretty flat, and the ending just ... collapsed. There was a big fight, then a 30 second elevator ride... and that's it.

I understand that the game had a better ending than that. Basically, take any Alien clone, change the aliens into demons, and slap Doom on the cover, and that's what you have here. A few tie ins and that's pretty much it.

Oh, except for a really well directed "First Person Shooter" bit of the movie, where the movie camera takes place of the eye camera in a "live action" version of a demo of Doom, which was pretty well made and was actually kind of fun. But when the best part of a 2 hour movie is 4 minutes of seeing a bobbing gun shooting things, you've got troubles.

If you're watching TV and the Food Network has run dry and Doom's on, I'd recommend watching it if you've got nothing better to do. But I sure wouldn't recommend running out to rent it or buying it anywhere but in the quarter bin at a garage sale.