I Am Legend is a film about a cure for cancer that goes horribly wrong when the virus begins to mutate. While most died from the infection, and a few were immune, hundreds of millions became “dark seekers” that terrorized and destroyed the remainder of the earth’s population. This intense movie did a few things really well but left a lot to be desired in other areas.
Will Smith gave an outstanding performance as Robert Neville, the last man in New York trying to find a cure and survive another day. New York City looked amazing and the story was well paced with one of the most stressful and suspenseful scenes I have scene in a long time…reminiscent of Alien. It was a very predictable plot, but I felt that the story was still good and had some depth to it.
The major disappointment is the infected “dark seekers.” They look like a bad video game. It was as if they spent their entire budget on New York City and then had to hire scrubs to make the monsters. As characters they were also ridiculously underdeveloped. At one point being described as lacking all human characteristics and then later displaying the ability to engineer well thought out attacks. And while they are supposed to be originally human they now seem to have expandable jaws for yelling and the skill to climb buildings with great speed.
There is a scene in one of the flashbacks where Neville prays with his family in a very genuine manner. In the future when he is alone we are introduced to every detail of his daily life and it is clear that spirituality is very absent. After he is saved in a crucial moment by another immune survivor we learn that he no longer believes in God. Later, when they are literally trapped like rats, he hears the “voice” of God again and sacrifices himself to preserve the cure and save the woman and a little boy.
While some might construe that as contrived, I thought it was decently executed. What I didn’t like about the ending was the woman’s voice over. First of all, we don’t care about this character because we just met her and it felt out of place for her to start telling us the story at the end. Secondly, she explains that the cure worked and made Neville a legend and “a light into darkness.” If the pivotal scene was for him to regain his faith in God, it really subtracts from the impact of his sacrifice to learn that mankind then made him a “god” in their eyes.
