Doom is a rehashed movie if I ever saw one. It borrows from Alien, Leviathan, and several other virus infects humans and turns them in to ugly creature’s movies. While I am a huge fan of The Rock, this movie does nothing to push his career forward. I believe this man will be the next Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger; he has this kind of screen presence.

After finding a portal to Mars, a group of futuristic archaeologists are trying to find out why it was built and what happened to the civilization who built it. But when the archaeologists find themselves under attack, a special marine tactical squad is called out to search and destroy. Soon, it's discovered that a synthetic gene has created superhuman healing traits that turn humans into people eating monsters. As Sarge (The Rock) and Reaper (Karl Urban) and his team (Rosamund Pike, Deobia Oparei, Ben Daniels, Raz Adoti, and Richard Brake) proceed through the facility they encounter these creatures in a battle that takes many on the crew’s lives.

The Picture:

I would highly recommend watching this DVD in a darken room. Much of the movie is shot in low level light or dark areas. The anamorphically enhanced 2:35:1 picture exhibits fine detail throughout, and decent shadow detail. The picture does get a little soft in portions, and some pixelation can be detected, but overall picture detail is finely rendered. Colors are very rich with no chroma noise to be found. Black levels go forever, and the picture is very punchy. The average bit rate hovers around 5mbps, with occasional jumps to 7.5-8mbps

The Sound:

The Dolby Digital 448kbps 5.1 soundtrack is first rate. It is hard hitting in the bass, and every channel is used to its fullest. The LFE channel is used from the time the movie starts, till it stops. There is deep bass in all channels (though down in level in the surrounds), and the mix is spatially engaging. While the soundtrack has excellent imaging across the fronts, there is little or no side imaging, or imaging across the rear hemisphere.

Extras:

Special features include an Basic Training featurette, a six-minute Rock Formation make-up highlight, a look at Stan Winston's Master Monster Makers, a six-minute breakdown of—quite possibly the coolest sequence in the movie—the First Person Shooter Sequence, a 15-minute look at the beginning of the DOOM Nation in the 1990s, and seven-minute Game On.

This offering from Universal Pictures is technically pretty good; however it does not have the keep you guessing suspenseful moments that movies like Aliens have.