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Shin Godzilla

Movies That Remind You of Doom

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OK, so there's obviously the Doom movie, and the game itself owes quite a bit to the Evil Dead trilogy and Alien quadrilogy (well, ED2 and Aliens at least). But I'm curious to see what other movies remind the members here of Doom - whether in terms of atmosphere, action, etc. I'll give a couple of my picks:

EVENT HORIZON - Actually, I remember that someone here on Doomworld mentioned how this movie was the closest thing to a Doom movie, even since the Doom movie came out. I'd probably have to agree; the set designs remind me a lot of Doom 3, and the whole thing could probably be taken as Doom without any straight-up demons (but a lot of supernatural occurrences). Also Sam Neill kicks ass.

JACOB'S LADDER - The general atmosphere reminds me quite a bit of the classic Doom games. I'd write more, but this post has been long-winded enough as it is.

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Hellish Godzilla said:

I'd write more, but this post has been long-winded enough as it is.

Your definition of long winded amuses me.

I'd say that Alien/Aliens was the closest to Doom, considering that Doom was originally going to be that license. I too drew parallels with Event Horizon.

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Bank said:

Your definition of long winded amuses me.


It looked longer while I was typing it. :P

Also I should probably mention DOG SOLDIERS as another 'Doom-y' movie. It just has that kick-ass sense of fun.

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Event Horizon totally lacks DOOM's violence, so to me it's a bad choice notwithstanding other factors. Zombie movies where people shoot them down always remind me of shooting Zombiemen, Shotgun guys and Heavy weapon dudes. Any Aliens clone has its DOOM resemblance, such as Starship Troopers or Resident Evil (the latter has zombies and an immoral mega-corporation anyway).

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Ichor said:
Not Doom.

Regardless of its cheesiness, just the DOOM logo at the start and the 1st person and chainsaw (or "berserk") scenes make it more DOOM than any other, except maybe for the movies that inspired the game.

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I think it may have been me you are thinking of describing "Event Horizon" as like Doom. I've certainly said it. I stand by it too. Sure, it doesn't have the violence but it has the creepiness and a lot of the feel of the story. It's kind of like half of the Doom movie: the atmosphere part. For the action part, you'd have to look elsewhere. "Aliens" is obviously a good place to start and I'd also agree with "Starship Troopers" once things get going.

As paradoxical as it may seem, I'd be hard pushed to agree with "Doom" (the movie) as being a Doom-like movie. To me, it really wasn't about Doom at all. Sure, the monsters looked like the Doom3 monsters (which to me are nothing like Daemonic monsters anyway, just more aliens - a weakness of Doom3 IMO) and it, yes, has the BFG and other Doom references. However, story, feel, atmosphere, most of the action, technology and, well almost everything really, has nothing to do with Doom. IMO, they'd have been better off calling it something else and making the movie they wanted to in the first place rather than trying to fit it to Doom and failing. The only really Doomy bit, IMO, was the FPS sequence which was too little too late. It's not an awful movie. In fact, I quite enjoyed bits of it and I do own a copy. It's just not Doom though.

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Enjay said:
I think it may have been me you are thinking of describing "Event Horizon" as like Doom.

Nah, I just think of you when replying about football or Steam.

There are various parts of the DOOM movie where the scenery is fitting for DOOM (such as some dark and gritty halls), plus it's got some (albeit more or less dumb) wittiness like DOOM does, while EH was all "serious" which is more like DOOM 3 than DOOM. In its own silly way it also moves from "coop" mode to "deathmatch". Even the characters' names are a play with online player names. Sure it's lame in many ways, but it plays with the game in various ways, evoking it, like no other movie does (not that they have any reason to do so).

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Those two "hell" episodes of Doctor Who in 2006, and the "kind of" follow-up at the end of Torchwood (Doom in Cardiff!)

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Event Horizon is like a TNT Evilution movie (these who read manuals may remember that Evilution was about a ship from hell). If you think the bad guy was a real life archvile (reinterpreted) or something, it could be a nice movie following the spirit of Alien/3 having a single monster.
It even has tortured bodies in hell.

The resident evil movies are out of choice as they're inspired in other games, so any relation is more about relations between the games rather than the RE movie and the DOOM games. But all other zombie movies do the job nicely, specially these that have high fire power (like City of the Dead).

The Mummy (first movie) reminded me a lot of Heretic/Hexen.

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Vegeta said:
The resident evil movies are out of choice as they're inspired in other games, so any relation is more about relations between the games rather than the RE movie and the DOOM games.

But the question is whether a movie reminds you of the game. Discarding some movies because of why this is the case doesn't make much sense. Resident Evil was evidently influenced by Aliens (the main and strongest point in common), plus there's any other influence DOOM may have had on the Resident Evil games themselves, or on the movie as a game-based shooter movie (which may have pushed the producers to ask for an Aliens clone).

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The Doom movie kinda reminds me of doom some times. I think they both had hell knights. I guess that's where they relate.

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There's no point in listing the Doom movie, since there are other movies (which inspired the game itself) that do what the Doom movie tried to do, and do it much better.

The two most obvious influences are Aliens and Evil Dead 2. In my opinion, they are the best sci-fi action movie and the best horror/comedy movie ever made, respectively, so this is fitting.

Other similar movies might include:

Event Horizon: obvious parallels about an experiment in space going awry and a portal to hell being opened. The ship disappears, just like Deimos, and it likely went to hell.

Ghosts of Mars: Similar Lovecraftian premise about an ancient evil "awakened" near a martian base. People are possessed too.

Predator: Jessie Ventura has a really cool minigun, and there is a shimmering monster, just like in Doom.

Dog Soldiers: A blatant rip-off of Aliens, Predator, Evil Dead, and a bunch of other movies that involves werewolves this time, but at least it delivers the goods.

Dawn of the Dead (1978): Gruesome, black-humored zombie movie that contains unsettling social commentary. Reminds me a little of Doom 2, actually, with a theme involving zombies and the breakdown of society. The authors of the Doom 2 novel had obviously seen this movie.

Dead Alive: You thought chainsaws rocked? Try lawn mowers!

Re-Animator: Fittingly based on another Lovecraft story, so I thought I'd include it here too.

Forbidden Planet: Another movie about a scientist who utilizes alien technology on a remote planet, and this knowledge is too much for one human to comprehend. He unwittingly summons monsters from his id. No joke.

Total Recall: Very violent, paranoid, and fast-paced adventure that's a feast for the eyes. Involves lots of shoot-outs and dismemberments on Mars. Also involves a plot concerning ancient alien tech that can create an atrificial atmosphere for the planet, sort of like the moon bases in Doom.

Starship Troopers: A brilliant political satire that stands Heinlein's novel on its head and shows us the brutal truth about military sacrifice, but so cynical and condescending towards its characters that it shies away from greatness. The futuristic commercials and propaganda are funny enough to sometimes make me wonder how the UAC might be represented in a smarter Doom movie.

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Slink said:

Total Recall: ...ancient alien tech that can create an atrificial atmosphere for the planet, sort of like the moon bases in Doom.


Hmmm...well, if you believe the novels (which I'm pretty sure most people here don't), then it was actually a very well-done dome to make it look as if there was open sky.

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Lobo said:

Might have been me, though it was over 4 years ago!: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=91915#post91915


Heh, I didn't even lurk around Doomworld 4 years ago, so I think your post is a little too far back. Now that I think of it, Enjay posted about it closer to the Doom movie's theatrical release.

Another movie that crossed my mind was Session 9, about an asbestos removal team working in an abandoned asylum. There isn't really anything supernatural (except for the voice of "Simon") and there's not even that much gore, but the scene with the guy in the tunnels at night really made me think of the tenser moments in Doom - just the idea of being stalked by some unknown (at least back when the games were new) thing in the darkness.

Slink said:

Ghosts of Mars: Similar Lovecraftian premise about an ancient evil "awakened" near a martian base. People are possessed too.


I've been meaning to check this one for a little while, if only because the other John Carpenter movies I've seen (Halloween, The Thing, In the Mouth of Madness) are some of my favourites. Fun fact: Map09 of Hellcore 2.0 is based on the town in ITMOM.

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Texas Libra said:

Hmmm...well, if you believe the novels (which I'm pretty sure most people here don't), then it was actually a very well-done dome to make it look as if there was open sky.

I think some of that was incorporated into the novels as well, at least the Earth-like gravity and partial atmosphere around the Phobos gate. Otherwise, it handled the moon bases a little more realistically than the game.

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Slink said:
There's no point in listing the Doom movie, since there are other movies (which inspired the game itself) that do what the Doom movie tried to do, and do it much better.

The reason there's no point is because it's obvious (or automatic) that it reminds one of the game.

Even if we took out and didn't know about all the spoken or written references to the game (BFG, DOOM logo, Carmack, and so on) we'd still say "oh look, that's like something from DOOM". The main reason people put it aside is because it is in fact a DOOM movie, but they don't like all the things in it that are different or missing from the game.

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Hmmm, I forgot to mention Highway to Hell (1992), which plays like a cheesy, low-budget cross between Road Warrior and Army of Darkness. Otherwise, it's a re-telling of the myth of Orpheus and Euridice. The hero must rescue his woman, who has been arrested by a cop from hell, and chase her into the netherworld. To aid him in his quest, he is equipped with a sawed-off, double-barrelled shotgun.

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BJ Blazkowicz said:

Plan 9 from Outer Space.


The fat zombie in Doom 3 is obviously modelled on Tor Johnson in Plan 9.

Starship Troopers definitely has it's moments.
Lost In Space - the firefight on board the space hulk Proteus.

Dare I suggest Mars Attacks! - when the two teenagers put their arcade shoot-em-up skills to good use in the White House.

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The Machinist, not for any particular reason other than the general dusky atmosphere and MAP13-like streets.

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I'm going to have to say I liked the Doom movie. Doom 4 should definitely have the Rock as the main character

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