very disappointing

Rating: 3/10 (21 December 2007)

I must admit that I was looking forward to this movie, since I had read the book about 6 months ago, before I even knew about the upcoming movie. As such, I probably had high expectations.
I was especially interested in seeing it since it was: A) one of the few books where the main character dies in the end, and B) one of the few times where the entire human race is destroyed at the end of the story. In the book version, humanity is completely wiped out, and a new race of mutant vampires takes humanity's place in the world.
Not much of that is present in the movie. Oh, sure, there are zombie mutants. Yes, they come out at night. However, it is only alluded to that they could be becoming more resistant to light - that aspect of the movie is not explored, as it is in the book.
One of the main plot points they left out of the movie was the fact that one of Neville's co-workers had become infected, returned from the dead, or what have you - in other words, he was a vampire. Every night, he would come out of hiding and scream Neville's name, trying to get him to come out. It was obvious that his co-worker remembered some things about Neville and their life together. This whole aspect was ignored in the film.
Another main point of the book was where the vampires used drugs to make one of their woman look more like a regular human, and sent her in to spy on Neville. This was one of the scariest parts of the book to me, when he realized she wasn't human, but he had trusted her, and let her into his life.
Finally, the worst part of the film was how they twisted the meaning of the book. In the book, the vampires finally capture Neville, and sentence him to death. He doesn't give them the satisfaction, opting to take some poison pills and commit suicide instead. However, before he dies, he learns that he will always be the stuff of legend to the new race of mutant vampires - he will always be remembered as the awful "last man", in stories told to children - about how he came in the day while people slept, and killed entire families of vampires.
The twisted ending of the movie, where he manages to find a cure and save humanity, almost seems like they changed the ending after shooting one more like the book. It's probably a change forced by the studio heads, in order to make the ending more acceptable to the everyday person. Instead, a bunch of people stood up and laughed at the ending in the theater where I was watching it. I really can't recommend this movie to anyone who has read the original book. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it to any of my friends or relatives, either. The movie doesn't really get what the book was trying to relate.