Do-Do Doom

After putting it off, I finally watched Doom. It would be easy to blow it off as a steaming pile of poop, make a few glib remarks, and then leave it at that. After all, that’s far more than it deserves.

The thing is, the night before I finally got around to catching Smokin’ Aces. The trailer had looked like a load of nonsense, but I’d really enjoyed Narc, Joe Carnahan’s previous film as writer and director. There was always the possibility that it could be enjoyable nonsense.


Maybe other people saw it that way. Maybe I was tired and should give it another shot somewhere down the line. I pretty much sat blank-faced through all the wild gunplay and mayhem. The only time I really registered any interest was when I figured out, pretty early on, the big twist. Oh, and Jason Bateman’s cameo made me laugh.

The spotty little oik behind the counter enthused about it as he took my money. He probably would have been in much the same rapturous state over Doom. I say I watched Doom. What really happened was that probably within five or ten minutes of slipping the disc into the player I was reading A.A. Gill’s restaurant review in The Sunday Times, then making a sandwich and a hot chocolate, checking websites while it merrily carried on in the background.


I’d look up occasionally to see the bunch of characters wandering around dark corridors blasting away at just about anything that moved with their ridiculously big guns before getting picked off. It just felt like I’d seen this film before, back when it was called Aliens, or even long before that.

Maybe it’s coincidental that British Summer Time is now over and today was gloomy and overcast. These kind of films – based on a videogame or shot to look like a videogame – just make me feel tired and old.

Within reason I’ll give anything a shot as long as it’s got a decent story (which obviously narrows the list right there). But more and more I get the feeling that I’m outside not just the audience but the age range of a large portion of the new films rolling into cinemas.

I’d watch any kind of nonsense when I was in my teens and could get to a cinema. Those films might not have been as slick but I just don’t remember them being so stupid and noisy and utterly fucking empty.