Somehow there was a big buzz leading up to the release of I Am Legend, and it opened accordingly big in theaters, but I missed all that. Then someone told me it was basically a big budget zombie flick and I was suddenly intrigued. A zombie flick with a big budget? Starring Will Smith? This just seemed all wrong. I had to check it out. (As with all my reviews I’ll be vague enough not to give spoilers – even for a movie as predictable as this one).
Going into the film I new nothing of the original book from 1954, nor the other two film adaptations that came before this one. Knowing this now, I can understand why the premise is so strikingly unoriginal. As the trailers and movie posters state, Will Smith is the last man on Earth, but he is not alone. A virus has run rampant and wiped out most of the population and left a few as some part vampire, part zombie flesh eating subculture.
The best parts of the movie are when Smith is alone (except for his dog Sam) while the movie traces his daily routine. In this first act of the movie the pace is slow enough that you take in the amazing scenes of a deserted New York City and wonder what it’d be like to be truly alone. Not a month, or a year, but three years living alone. The set designers and CGI artists are some really talented folk making the post-apocalyptic NYC the real star of the movie. If you’ve been to New York (and probably if you haven’t) you just can’t stop wondering how they created such a believable, vast and desolate scene.
But wait I’ve seen all this before. Only it wasn’t NYC, it was London, where a virus outbreak turned the gen-pop into a different, but more believable breed of speed zombies. 28 Days Later came out back in 2002, and since then speed “zombies” (virus victims) have become all the rage (pun intended) (see also Resident Evil and Dawn of the Dead) rather than the slow, stumbling dim wits of the 70s and 80s. It’s like at some point the scariest thing about the slow, masses of traditional zombies – the shear number of them – just wasn’t enough. Film makers wanted to turn up the scary gain. And so zombies got fast. Wicked fast.
Maybe Freddy Krueger is at the heart of the zombie evolution. Of course Freddy wasn’t a zombie, but he was one of the few mainstream characters in the horror renaissance of the 80s, who would run you down. Freddy wasn’t full speed all the time, but he broke the tradition set by Romero and followed by Jason and Micheal Myers. Suspense gave way to terror. And it was only a matter of time before it hit the zombie genre.
With I Am Legend I get the impression the creative team wanted to turn the gain to eleven. Faster, stronger, with bigger months, and if that’s not enough maybe we’ll make them smart, too. Yeah, take that you seasoned horror movie fan. But wait, this movie is PG-13 (it’s a Will Smith flick after all) so we can’t get too gory. As a result, I’ve never seen a zombie movie with less blood and guts.
So all that becomes clear in the second act, and just like Smith’s acting you feel the baddies are a notch too over the top. As the movie barrels through the third act, you’re in the familiar territory of a big budget Will Smith action flick. Luckily the writers keep Smith’s wise cracks to a minimum. I wasn’t crazy about the ending, but it really could have been MUCH worse. In the end I actually wanted to see more of the movie, so I’d have to give the movie a pretty good mark. Unlike most big budget movies it wasn’t more of the big action ending that I was craving but just more of that surreal New York daily life. Although there were some seriously creepy missed opportunities in the subways stations or Grand Central, I dug the Bob Marley theme and soundtrack. And it helped up make up for Smith’s shameless, shirtless workout scenes.
Tags: Movies
Will Smith shirtless?? Not shameful!! It’s wonderful! 🙂