See it for the first 3/4 of the movie

Rating: 7/10 (10 January 2008)

Basically, I think I agree with a lot of people on this. I loved most of the movie. I reminded me of 28 Days Later without riding its back. From the beginning to the dog's death (which wrenched a few tears from my mother and me), the movie was taut, raw, and believable. It was when Anna came into the scene and started talking about God and his plan that I felt the movie lost its impetus. The entire movie was going down a pretty straight road (no, I'm not trying to emulate Emma Thompson's explanation of her 'vaccine,' although I suppose it's apt that my metaphor resembles it), and then suddenly near the end it twists to the side and you wonder where the ending came from because that didn't seem to be the direction you were originally going.
I'm not talking about predictability and I'm not talking about convention. I'm talking about a story arc that reaches a satisfying conclusion. Movies (and other forms of literature) resemble real life, but we all know that movies can't completely mirror real life. Whereas life is a series of overlapping waves, movies need to have a connected arc. There was no theme through the greater part of the movie that lead to the end, and in my opinion (although I may be biased), Robert made a pretty compelling argument against Anna's God. Anna's sole purpose seemed to be to bring God into the situation without any other precedent in the movie. Suddenly, all these butterflies come along when the only connection that I could remember was from his daughter. And that's all. It was not significant enough to draw upon for a climax. I am Legend wasn't Signs. At the end, I only had the sensation of being force-fed a theme that the rest of the movie did not support. The butterflies at the end struck me as a fantastic coincidence and not the Fate Given By God that the director intended. I walked away unsatisfied.