My son and I went to see Will Smith in I Am Legend this past weekend. It is one of those movies that manages to display both the awesome strengths of modern cinema, and its appalling weaknesses. No one who likes horror films could say that this was a bad movie. And even those who don't would have to admit to some astonishment at Smith's performance. He is one of those rare actors who can carry a movie pretty much all by himself. He has to, as for most of the way through he is the only remaining human being.
Smith plays Robert Neville, apparently the only survivor of a terrible plague that has wiped out most of humanity and reduced the remained few to bloodthirsty monsters. I should say, as the resident SDP expert on the undead, the monsters in IAL are not vampires, as in the original novel, nor true zombies. They are pseudo-zombies, unable to bear exposure to daylight, and lusting for the blood of living creatures. Neville roams the streets of New York by day, talking to his dog and maintaining relationships with department store manikins, but must retreat to his fortified house at night. He is also a scientist who was once expected to save the world from the plague. He continues to believe that he can do this in his basement lab.
The movie is extraordinarily good almost to the very end. But the ending is a disappointment. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend was easily one of the most influential horror novels ever written. It probably ranks fourth, behind The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and Frankenstein in that order. But if the first three are better known in film, and more frequently read, Matheson's work has spawned far more dark progeny. Although the novel was about a lone human being surrounded by vampires, it inspired an undying throng of zombie movies beginning with George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
Matheson's novel has a delightful and extraordinarily imaginative ending, which explains its unusual title. I am not going to spoil that ending for anyone. Read the book. Or if you want the short version, see the Wikipedia entry. The makers of the current film had not the courage to be loyal to Matheson's vision, which is incomparably more interesting than the story they tell. That aside, it is a rocking good movie. And the dog should get an Oscar.
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