Event Horizon: The Real Doom Movie

So I watched the Doom movie tonight, after having only seen 15 minutes of it in the past and putting off actually watching the whole thing for the last 3 years, partly because of how universally reviled it is. And I got to thinking, you know, there's another movie, completely unrelated to Doom, that's truer to what Doom is about than the movie actually based on the game.

In August 1997, a movie called Event Horizon was released in theaters. While ultimately a standard space horror movie in the vein of Alien, its thematic elements, much of its set designs, and the plot, drew influence from a wide range of sources: aside from the Alien series, it borrowed elements from the original Russian version of Solaris, 2001, The Haunting and Hellraiser. in addition to non-film media such as Doom and the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000. Some of the thematic influences are quite obvious. The Gothic-inspired design of the Event Horizon seems to be lifted from Warhammer 40,000, as is the concept of a dimension of pure chaos that sits between point A and point B when a ship attempts to bend space and time in faster than light travel. Teleportation being a gateway to hell was also a majour theme of Doom, as well. The pacing and mood of the film is not unlike Alien and Aliens, starting off slow but building up into a crescendo. The film was written by Philip Eisner (also known for cable channel Sci Fi's Firestarter: Rekindled) and an uncredited Andrew Kevin Walker (perhaps best known for Se7en). It was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who was riding high on the success of the Mortal Kombat film and wanted to go back to making R movies. Regardless of what one may think of most of his work (among them the Resident Evil movies and Alien Vs. Predator, which in my opinion is an absolute abortion that still doesn't reach the level of failure presented by Alien Resurrection), this film turned out to be quite good.

The year is 2047. and the Event Horizon, a ship that has been presumed lost, having disappeared without a trace in 2040, has suddenly reappeared near Neptune. The Event Horizon was designed for faster-than-light travel, by a stardrive that would bend space and time to create a wormhole extending to any point in the universe. Unfortunately, when the original crew attemped to use it, the entire ship disappeared. Dr. William Weir, played by Sam Neill, designed the stardrive and so accompanies the rescue ship Lewis and Clark. When they arrive at the Event Horizon, the crew is absent, the ship is without power, and bioscans return strange readings. As the rescue crew explore the ship, the stardrive activates itself and pulls the engineer in, sending a shockwave that damages the Lewis and Clark. Things only get worse from there, as Dr. Weir and the others are plagued by visions of the things that haunt them, the engineer returns, comatose, only to attempt suicide, and Weir himself falls prey to the influence of whatever had taken over the ship. In the end, Captain Miller of the Lewis and Clark sacrifices himself to save the last surviving members of his crew.

The film was a failure at the box office, and it got a bit silly towards the end ("you let me burn! *fwoosh*") but became a cult classic, to the point that a special edition was released in 2006. Paul Anderson is a hack, but he managed to pull off some excellent direction. I think the main difference between this film, and the Resident Evil and Alien versus Predator series is that Paul Anderson didn't write Event Horizon.

Then there's the Doom movie.

The general plot of Doom, both the classic games and the more recent Doom 3, has been that attempts to create teleportation technology have opened up a gateway into Hell. The Doom movie gets rid of all that. In the movie, released in October 2005 with a high production budget, the monsters that roam the UAC facilities are revealed to be humans turned monstrous through an added 24th chromosome. These monsters are able to infect others through bites, and in the end it is revealed that the monsters tended to go after the more unsavoury characters, such as a Marine named Portman, a perverted asshole obsessed with sex and a bit of a coward. Private Hudson his not. The hero, John Grimm, is injected with the chromosome as a last-ditch effort to save his life, and becomes superhuman instead, going on a rampage throughout the facility slaughtering monsters and zombies left and right.

My first impression of the movie was that they drew a good deal of their set designs from Doom 3. The plot is nothing at all like Doom, having replaced the Biblical concept of Hell as presented in the games with genetic modification with a morality twist and mixed it with Aliens. It's basically Resident Evil in space.

It's hard to decide if I like or dislike the movie. I remember there was a lot of pissing and moaning about the plot as details were revealed even before the movie came out, and the writer defended it to the death, blaming Hollywood for just about everything that pissed fans off. I'm not sure if the genetics plot was his idea or not, but the premise is frankly irritating especially in light of what Doom is supposed to be about, but the movie itself has high production values and the acting isn't shit-terrible for the most part. It definitely has an Aliens feel to it, but that's not saying much as sci-horror with a hidden, elusive enemy was basically invented by the Alien series and is nearly an ubiquitous trope now. Plot aside, it suffers in the same way Doom 3 did- too much trying to balance action and suspense, killing both. The movie fared better than the game, for the most part, but the only time it ever actually felt like Doom was the 5-minute first person shooter sequence. And even then it didn't feel like Doom 3, it felt more like Classic Doom- the classic, borderline silly run and gun that I grew up with. Which I guess kind of saves the rest of the movie- it's Grimm's Crowning Moment of Awesome, and the movie's as well.

So it comes down to this: Why do I call Event Horizon the "real" Doom movie? Because it embodies what I think Doom 3 should have been and what it clearly wanted to be- a high-suspense horror tale that relies on a cultural fear of classic, Fire n' Brimstone Hell to create tension, making the scary parts that much scarier. It's not as action-packed, but frankly the argument over "Modern Doom" and "Classic Doom" and whether one or the other should be action-packed or suspenseful is an article for another day.

"What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart?"

Today I watched A Scanner Darkly (2006) for the second time. This film, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, is notable for its interpolated rotoscope animation, a feature you've probably seen in a number of Charles Schwab commercials. (The process, incidentally, is done by the same guy.) I would argue that it is also notable for being Keanu Reeves' best performance. I am by no means a Keanu fan, but he really pulls off his performance in this film brilliantly. I've often felt that the best sign that an actor has been cast in your film well is how good he sounds in voice-over. There are exceptions, of course- there probably would not have been a better choice than Harrison Ford for Blade Runner (ironically, another film based on a Phil Dick novel) but he has completely the wrong voice for the voiceovers used in the original film; however, this is probably a bad example due to the fact that the voiceovers were a hotly contested issue during the making of the film and nobody involved actually wanted it in, it was a studio decision. Hence its very noticeable absence in the Director's Cut and Final Cut. But I digress; the point is that Keanu's voice-over suits the film well. He sounds tired, depressed, confused, and disillusioned.

This is the second time I've watched the film, as I've said before, but it wasn't until this second viewing that the full impact of the movie really hit me. When I had first watched it, I found it to be a good film, rather dark, occasionally funny, then it was over and I moved on. The second time around, though, I realized just how dark and fucked up it was. It portrays a future America "seven years from now" in the grip of a drug epidemic- a powerful new drug, Substance D, has hit the streets, and American troops are fighting an unseen war overseas over it. To fight this drug at home, the government has instituted a powerful surveillance program. Anyone and everyone can be spied on in any way at any time. Privacy laws have been flung out the window, and anyone even remotely considered to be part of the Substance D problem is subject to intense scrutiny. You can even be spied upon in your own home, without knowing it. Protagonist Bob Arctor (Keanu) is an undercover cop (codenamed "Fred" at the Orange County Police Station) who has been assigned to infiltrate and watch over a group of junkies, supplied by Barris (played very well by Robert Downey Jr.) in the hopes that Barris, and Arctor's girlfriend Donna (a virtually unrecognizable Winona Ryder), would lead them higher up the chain. In the process, however, he himself becomes addicted, and the resultant paranoia and identity crisis are the focal point of the film. Already quite disillusioned, and world-weary from the things he's seen in his work, he becomes much more so as the drug takes hold of him, and in a particularly dark, thought-provoking scene, he walks home from work musing on his job, on Bob Arctor the supposed drug fiend, and states that nothing makes sense to him anymore, wondering if a scanner sees things better than he does.

The soundtrack is a brilliant work, evoking the original Blade Runner score, though obviously a little more modern in spots. The use of violin in the opening credits is heart-wrenchingly appropriate, and the music is fairly consistently dark and thoughtful throughout. The music fits perfectly with each scene, particularly the aforementioned "What does a scanner see?" scene as well as a scene where he gives a disjointed speech, the first hint to his disillusionment and world-wearinss to a gathering of Bear Lodge members.

The science fiction in this film is relatively minimal; you're not going to see flying cars a la Blade Runner's 2019. Probably the most sci-fi element in the whole thing is the scramble suits, which are worn by undercover agents while working in the police station so that their coworkers do not know who they are. To this end I think a person who says (as a purely knee-jerk reaction) "I don't like sci-fi" (and are likely thinking of some spacefaring thing such as Star Trek) can enjoy this film.

Part of why this film really grabbed me, this second time, was because I realized how much it hit home. We are rapidly becoming a society where privacy laws are considered draconian, and certainly there is a war "over there" that many of us don't really understand anymore. It also brings to mind the long-running (and long-lost) War on Drugs, which the government will never win, but is willing to destroy lives forever in its relentless pursuit of an unattainable victory. I feel that many of us are going to feel like Bob Arctor, if we don't already- disillusioned, tired, confused, and unsure of who we are and how we got here. Nothing will make sense anymore, not that it ever did in the first place. The things that happen to Bob Arctor mirror the things that happen to us. We are destined to be screwed over, and not only do we not see it coming, we won't even realize that it's happened. To us, it will seem like an accident. "If a bomb is wired to a car's ignition, then obviously there is an enemy.... But if an accident, or a series of accidents, occurs..., over a period of natural time..., then the victim, whether a person or a party or a country, can never marshal itself to defend itself." (That's from the book, by the way.) And in that regard, we're doomed.