Myth and Legend

Rating: 7/10 (18 January 2008)

Will Smith is the last man on Earth (probably?), living in a New York city turned wild. We know there's more from the trailers - "Nighttime: survive." So who or what is this mysterious force that opposes Robert Neville as he ekes out a lonely life from society's dusty leftovers? I Am Legend artfully ropes you in with the premise, but it's like a clumsy teenager trying to make love from that point on. Some people will be disappointed by the way things wrap up, but I appreciated the sentiment and obvious affection for how the film was crafted.
This is one of those films where the setting is its own character, it's so well-developed and omnipresent. The movie's appeal lies mostly there, and with Will Smith being almost impossible to dislike. Plus there's a dog. Who doesn't love smart dogs in movies? I enjoy survival stories that don't highlight any serious physical pain. Robinson Crusoe, Lost, the Boxcar Children from my youth. You get to see everyone revert to a much simpler life as hunter/gatherers. I Am Legend is full of tiny, well-thought out details for how man might survive in a post-apocalyptic city. Neville keeps a hydroponic garden in his kitchen and harvests corn in the park. Even with a fancy rifle, hunting deer is difficult and best done on foot. Drugs, TVs, and money are useless, but bacon is priceless. Robert is strong, but painfully lonely, and talks to mannequins to maintain some sort of social normalcy. Daily exercise must be rigorous if Robert wishes to compete with the wild and survive the monsters.
And the monsters are where I start to get lost. It wouldn't be enough to have Robert Neville wandering around for two hours, so there must be a direct conflict. That's well built up when we see Neville revert to hysterics when Sam the dog runs off, or when his daily routine is timed to sunset. Why does Robert freak out when the dog disappears into darkness? Why is it important that Robert returns to his home by sunset? Why must he bar the windows and doors to his own home and pour some unknown liquid over his tracks on the doorstep? The monsters, of course, are us. By playing God and finding a viral cure for cancer, the punishment handed down was death and vampirism to all. Neville is immune to the vampire virus, but still has to worry about surviving their mindless aggression. This could have been very poignant if we'd never seen a monster, or if the monsters had retained at least some of their humanity.
Halfway through the movie, it stops becoming a survival story and starts morphing into a survival of the fittest story. Neville gets into violent battles with hordes of CGI vampires. It's not very realistic, though the irony of being immune to a virus and dying from the secondary effects anyway is not lost on me. As with Signs and nearly every survival horror story before it, the suspense vanishes completely when the horror stops being psychological and starts being primal. It's appealing to a lot of people - enough that survival horror is its own genre - but I seem to loose my connection to the hero as soon as he enters a dark hallway. I'd never do that, after all! And the monsters never frighten me when I can see them. Pyramid Head is a pushover.
The movie ends abruptly and unnecessarily, and for that, a lot of people won't like it. But I enjoyed the ride. I Am Legend really delivers through the first half of the movie, where the build is immensely interesting and suspenseful. But the conflict and resolution just isn't scary or satisfying.
PS: leave the children at home, please. CGI vampires are not for younglings (usually).