I Am Legend

So, what makes I Am Legend a terrible movie?

Will Smith, as Robert Neville, is good, really good. For most of the film, he's all we have, and his truly great performance is too measured and subtle for a film of this calibre. Having said that, the acting of his sidekick dog is too good for this film, so perhaps that's not the greatest compliment. It is the only nice thing I'm saying about this movie, though, so savour it.

The special effects aren't that special. The Vampires/Zombies are terrible throwbacks to the first Steven Sommers Mummy film; they have wide gawping mouths that look cartoonish and impossibly wide and all they seem to do is scream impotently. They are grey, obviously computer generated, freaks that have an implied backstory and a definite agenda, but this is never explored once by anyone in the film. They are at once crafty and stupid, capable of trapping Neville with a snare trap but portrayed elsewhere as simple, mindless, bloodlusting monsters. It's not even as though there is a hierachy of stupidity, with leaders being slightly more clever. The vampire 'leader', while capable of capturing Neville, is seen at the end of the film screaming and throwing himself at a plate glass window.

Another example of this stupidity is during the first scene that we see the Vampires. They eviscerate a Deer being chased by Neville and his dog, and yet seem to stop in the middle of a dark room, facing away from their kill, just so that they don't immediately see Neville as he wanders into their nest. It's done to build up tension, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Every shock is practically telephoned in and is always the most obvious and direct way to make the audience jump out of their seat. In a dark room? Have a Vampire scream out from the blackness! Movie flagging? Cut to a rabid rat in a cage! This lazy movie making extends to almost all parts of the film. I swear that the sidekick dog is there to be killed only for the emotional sympathy it's supposed to generate in the audience. The flashbacks are only there to flesh out Neville's otherwise weak motivation for staying in New York to try to cure the virus.

This extends to the reason for killing off the main character. You can't have a living legend so Neville has to die, heroically of course, after curing the KV virus, by blowing himself up. In the novel, Neville actually becomes the monster, killing the so-called 'Still-Living', those infected by the virus but not exhibiting the bloodlust and insanity. His legend is not fame but infamy, he becomes a mirror to the vampiric condition, slaying all during the day. I don't think Hollywood was ready for that, but I know I would much rather have seen that movie than the crap I saw tonight.

PS. The virus wipes out all life on the planet but is killed by cold. Why the fuck is Vermont the place where humanity starts all over again? In the movie it's claimed that the Vermont Mountains are cold enough to kill the virus but the walled outpost that the two surviving 'characters' finally reach is definitely not in the mountains and it doesn't look remotely chilly. Even if Vermont is icy enough, then surely there are other places that are even colder than that, making the tagline Last Man on Earth slightly bogus. Canada, anyone?