Tasteless and maybe pointless

Rating: 6/10 (20 October 2008)

When it came out there was a great advertising and promotion campaign. Yet it did not fulfill its promises. One more survival film, you will say. Maybe but I am afraid it is more serious than that. One more epidemic film. Yes for sure, but yet it is deeper than that. One more zombie and living dead film then. Absolutely, but the disappointment comes from farther than that. The film uses three very common forms and it could have intertwined them and twisted them in a new creative way. But with one character and a dog, you do not go that far. In fact it is the whole argument of Stephen King's The Stand. The super flu, the dying of everyone, the survival of a few. But Stephen King remains human and the two antagonistic camps are human survivors and then they represent the two opposite impulses of the human species: to fight and kill to survive against others, and to organize collectively to survive with others. In this film the survivors are good humans and all the others are bad mutants. Badness in man is thus not human but anti-human. That is very naive indeed, especially when we understand the epidemic was caused by the irresponsible experiments of one doctor on thousands of people with genetically manipulated viruses. It is this vision of good humans attacked from outside by some who are no longer human at all that makes the film poor and even weak. Evil is not outside. Evil is inside. Anyone who says the reverse is just a blind man. Then the plot is no plot because we know what it is going to be. There is no surprise and no psychological death. And the dramatic events here and there are defused by too much disbelief to suspend. How did the woman arrive in Manhattan, how did she escape the house, how did she drive out of Manhattan, how did she know where to go? And many other questions like those. Then the legend becomes a fable and a weak one at that. Too bad because the theme could have been better and the author behind, Matheson, is supposed to be better than that.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines