More Zombies Anyone?

Rating: 5/10 (29 December 2010)

'I Am Legend' is 'The Omega Man' updated. And it's daft.
The complete recreation of a deserted and dilapidated New York is very nicely realised. It's on an even grander scale than 'After Humans'. I enjoyed seeing the grasses and weeds shoving through the roads and pavements and putting up two herbaceous fingers at human arrogance. It's just as John Wyndam described London in 'The Triffids'.
There's been a plague. Thanks to the efforts of a well-intentioned, but unfortunately-named Dr Krippen, a cure became the opposite. We are told that 90% of humanity died, 9% turned 'zombie flesh-eater' and 1% were immune. Most of the latter got eaten by the zombies. It's a hard life. Will Smith plays New York's sole survivor. And he's a doctor with special knowledge of disease and immunity - which is handy. He also seems to be an expert on electronics and explosives too. Hmm. His wife and child got killed in a helicopter accident during evac, leaving him with his Alsatian puppy which has since grown up. So here he is, working on his own, trying to find a cure, and gradually going screwy.
Like all of our ancient terrors; the zombies only come out at night, so he's more or less free to roam in the daytime. He forages for food, traps the odd zombie for experiments, hunts wild game and collects CD's.
The disease is apparently both an airborne and contact contagion. Legend himself has complete immunity. His dog, meanwhile, only has immunity from the airborne form. How there can be any difference between the two when the disease symptoms themselves are identical is unclear, and merely serves to demonstrate a lack of pathogenic research on the part of film-makers. Like so many of them nowadays; they assume audiences to be just uneducated clots who can be bought-off with wham-bam-also-ran special-effects. Not only that; if the disease can infect dogs, why hasn't it infected the herds of wild game? Or the lions, for that matter. Surely they must contain the vital element of immunity then (yet our hero concentrates upon rats and zombies). Moreover; why haven't the zombies tracked all the animals down at night and eaten them?
Furthermore; the zombies are running a temperature, heart-rate etc on par with an athlete, and they're wearing almost no clothes (they wear enough to satisfy the censors!). To be in such work-out condition for an hour would be strenuous enough, but to sustain it 24/7 would require a huge calorific intake. 5,000+ per day. From where is this energy being drawn? They'd have to eat pure lard, or be burned-out within 48hrs.
I don't mean to nit-pick, but if a movie is going to have quasi scientific/medical pretensions like this one, it's no good vacillating between plausibility and absurdity just to appease a plot that doesn't stand to reason. Either be a sci-fi movie or a horror fantasy; don't try to rationalise one into the other. That creates a fairy tale.
Which brings me to the culminating question. Why is Legend trying to develop a vaccine at all? The few remaining normal people left alive like him already have natural immunity. The zombies are so violent that even if they can't infect you they'll rip you to shreds, so you'll likely get slaughtered trying to use it on any of them. The logical thing is to just clear out and let nature take its course.
If you're someone who doesn't stop to think: If you just sit there and take the whole thing as it unfolds without evaluation or question - in other words, answer to the prescription of its makers - then there is some decent tension, excellent set-pieces and lots of second-rate CGI to enjoy, and Will Smith gives a very decent turn for his paycheque. But that's it. It's not a thinking person's experience.
The ending is perhaps daftest of all. Partway through the movie, during a crisis, he is rescued by a pretty heroine who turns up with a young boy. Both have immunity too. So, at last he no longer has to talk to himself or tailors' dummies. And he's no longer alone (by now the dog's dead). This girl insists that there's an upstate enclave of survivors. Which is something Legend dismisses as complete twaddle. Yet in the last moments, when he has finally isolated a vaccine and the ZF-E's have invaded his stronghold, he gives the vaccine to her and the boy and ushers them into an escape tunnel. So where does he imagine they are going, if he doesn't believe the enclave exists? And what does he suppose she will do with his vaccine? Meanwhile, instead of going with her, he shuts off the 'escape route' and blows himself up with the zombies. He could just as easily have pulled the pin, chucked the grenade, and escaped with the girl as well. Daft.
If you think this movie is in any way exceptional, then you should check-out Jodie Foster's 'Flightplan'.