Doom

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Doom's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Doom completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 1 October 2005.

Overall comments and recommendations

Doom, based upon the video game of the same name, is an action, science fiction, horror, movie, targeting adolescent males, and specifically those who are fans of the video game. For people who are not Doom video game players, the film has little, if anything, to offer in terms of storyline or acting and its abundant use of coarse language is overdone.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie Doom contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

A group of Earth based marines led by Sarge (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) are sent to Mars to investigate an attack on a group of Mars based scientists who have been brutally slain by an unknown assailant. On Mars, the marines team up with archaeologist Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pike), sister of Marine John “Reaper” Grimm (Karl Urban). Samantha leads the marines to the location where the attacks occurred, and the marines begin to explore the complex, corridor by corridor. The marines are attacked by mutant monster-like creatures with superhuman strength. The remainder of the film is a cat and mouse game between the marines and the attacking monsters with the marines losing team members one by one to the mutants.

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

Doom contains frequent, gory, high level violence, including:

• a women has her arm severed at the elbow—the blood soaked remains twitch on the floor
  
• a scientist rips his own ear off
  
• a marine cuts an image of a cross into his own forearm
  
• marines shoot human mutants with enough force to propel their bodies twenty feet across a room
  
• a mutant bites chunks of flesh from the neck of a marine
  
• marines fire high power weaponry at mutants
  
• a mutant decapitates a marine
  
• a mutant smashes his head against a wall of glass until he becomes unconscious
  
• a mutant picks up a marine and repeatedly smashes his body against concrete walls
  
• a brutal fight between a marine and a mutant ends with the marine electrocuting the mutant
  
• Sarge sticks the barrel of a hand gun into the mouth of a mutant and blows the side of the mutant’s face off
  
• Sarge shoots numerous people in the head, execution-style
• Sarge shoots one of his own marines in the throat after the marine refuses to obey an order.
  
• mutants laugh while being shot in the head and face
  
• a marine embeds a hatchet in a mutant’s head
  
• a chainsaw-wielding mutant attacks the marines
  
• mutants are blown apart with high-powered grenades
  
• a brutal fist fight between superhuman John and super mutant Sarge.
  
• Sarge wraps a steel rod around his arm and fist and then uses it as a weapon to beat John around the head and body

All of the violence presented throughout the film was enacted by males, whether humans or mutants. The film’s sole female character Samantha, spent most of her time running away from mutants intent on killing her.

Material that may scare children

Under eight

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

In addition to the above mentioned violent scenes, there are some scary scenes and visual images, which could seriously disturb children under eight including:

• demon-like mutant creatures
  
• skeletons of aliens in glass-like bottles
  
• beating hearts, lungs and other body organ in glass tubes
  
• a crazed scientist with horrific gashes to his body holding a severed human arm
  
• caged lab animals, which are killed in the most brutal manner with their entrails draped over cages.
  
• a mutant human eating a dead animal
  
• mutants biting the neck of a marine and then injecting the marine with an alien-like creature
  
• a mutant autopsy, in which Samantha cuts open a human mutant’s chest and then spreads open the rib cage
  
• scientists injecting a human recipient with alien DNA; the human then grotesquely transforms into a mutant
  
• mutants pull a marine through a vent in the floor leaving a pool of blood behind.

Over the age of eight

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

All of the scenes described above are capable of disturbing, or scaring children over the age of eight., including adolescents.

Sexual references

Doom contains a few sexual references mostly made early in the film,:

• one marine in particular, is depicted as having a sexually deviant nature, and states that his idea of a good time is to be “locked in a room with a bottle of tequila and three she boys”
  
• after arriving on Mars, the same marine tells a number of female civilians that he needs to strip-search them.
  
• a marine states “You let a fine piece of arse get away from you”, in reference to someone having a prior relationship with Samantha.

Nudity and sexual activity

Other than one scene in which a life-sized, side view cut-out of a nude female is seen, Doom contains no nudity, or sexual activity.

Use of substances

There is mild use of substances, including:

• cigarette smoking
  
• a younger marine, ‘The Kid’, asks an older marine if he has anything, inferring drugs, stating that he “needs something”, as he is a little shook up. He is handed two coloured pills, which he places in his mouth, and later becomes jumpy and talkative. One of the marines notices the behaviour and looks into the drugged marine’s eyes stating that they are dilated.
  
• Samantha injects adrenaline into a marine’s chest, and later injects John with alien DNA.

Coarse language

Doom contains very coarse language, with the marines using coarse language as part of their everyday speech, including frequent use of:

• shit
  
• fuck
  
• bull-shitting me
  
• Goddam
  
• fucking
  
• mother-fucker.

The movie's message

The main take-home message in this movie, is the moral issue surrounding the use of artificially enhanced human DNA, suggesting that. attempting to improve ourselves via chromosome enhancement could lead to our own destruction

Parents may wish to discuss: the film’s frequent use of coarse language, the impression created by it and whether or not it is appropriate in any situations. They could also discuss why the Kid felt he needed the assistance of drugs, whether there were any consequences, and what other choices he could have made.