Doom Annihilation - Movie Review

What do you get when a fan film somehow gets their hands on the licensing for a legendary video game franchise and utilizes Power Rangers level of production?

The sound of the water swirling as ID software flushes their IP down the drain.

Let’s discuss.

Doom Annihilation is a 2019 sci-fi / horror film brought to us by writer / director Tony Giglio, AKA the American Uwe Boll. How a guy whose main directing credit was Soccer Dog: The Movie got his hands on ID Software’s license for DOOM, especially with 0 star power in the cast, is beyond me.

For all intents and purposes, I believe this film was meant to be a sequel to DOOM starring Judge DREDD and the Scorpion King. That film, much like this one, had very little to do with the incredible DOOM game or mythology. There is no DOOM SLAYER in these films. It’s implied that the DOOM slayer was created by Chromosome 24 in the first film, but that’s ditched here. Now we’ve just got a really bad ALIENS ripoff utilizing poorly executed imps in place of the majestic xenomorphs.

I know, I know, I’ll get into the synopsis.

Just give me a second to calm down.

Ahem…

The film focuses on Lt. Joan Dark and her team of UAC marines as they are deployed to a research facility on Phobos, a moon in Mars’ orbit. The team is united in their distrust of Joan for something that occurred on a previous mission and their none too happy to be sent all the way out to Mars to babysit scientists. Those feelings of enmity and frustration are only doubled down when they discover that the Phobos base has been overrun with a demonic horde bent on destroying all life in the universe. Will Joann unite her team and bring an end to the hellish threat or will the demons institute hell on earth? Find out on today’s feature, Doom: Annihilation.

Or Don’t.

It’s ironic that a movie about hell is this God awful.

I mean, I expected it to be bad, but Jesus… Troma would have had better production values. This film looks like it was made by a high school drama department with an above average iMovie operator. The spaceship interiors look like a Star Trek fan film and the demons appear to be a singular practical effect that’s duplicated with terrible cgi paired with low quality chromakey.

What’s sad is… that’s not the worst part.

What could be worse than community theater production values you may be asking?

The acting.

This pains me to say, because the actress who plays Joan Dark, Amy Manson, is a gorgeous woman and a fine actor.

But…

Her performance is terrible and outright tanks this film from moment one. I know it’s not entirely her fault, because the direction in this film is a step below Paul W.S. Anderson. Which makes sense, since Giglio was an assistant director for Anderson’s attempts are ruining Resident Evil. Joan Dark, besides having a name ripped off from the Perfect Dark game series, is an emotional black hole. It’s obvious the attempt was to have her be a quiet badass with a shady past, but the direction she was given makes the character come off as a wooden clog. She’s an emotional black hole with no expression or inflection.

When you transform a talented, accomplished actress into the worst part of your no name cast, it’s a sign.

You shouldn’t be directing.

Oh, and when your script is this terrible?

Maybe don’t write films either.

There’s no spoilers to see here.

No Further discussion.

Please don’t watch this film.

Don’t support Hollywood’s cheap skate money grabs.

Just say no to Doom: Annihilation.