Climbs to a near-peak, then crashes down in away that is nearly heartbreaking

Rating: 4/10 (16 December 2007)

As we all (well, most of us know), I Am Legend is a remake. Countless thrillers that I've seen have left me with a poor impression on remakes, but come on, I Am Legend seemed so incredibly epic when I first saw the trailer, then later the commercials. So last night I went out to see it.
The movie, as shown by the commercials, is basically that everyone on the planet dies save Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith). The film does not begin with the story of the downfall of earth and Robert's experience through that; all of that is revealed through Robert either watching old tapes he made of the news or in flashbacks. That's okay though, because the movie is interesting enough from the beginning that you don't even notice. It definitely is amazing and chilling to watch Robert as he goes through his day-to-day life in NYC as the only human in existence. The city's streets are cracked with weeds pushing their way through cement , some buildings are wrapped in plastic, cars are jammed on the roads in a way that tells the audience that they were abandoned in a frenzy. His faithful dog, Sam accompanies him and in my opinion seriously added an excellent touch to the film. However, Robert is living amongst these sort of cannibalistic, super-strong, super-agile, zombie-like creatures (think 28 Days/Weeks Later) that only come out at night and are burned by sunlight. Besides busying himself with hunting for food and waiting around hopefully for any other survivors, Robert works studiously in his lab, testing on animals and all the infected humans to try and find a cure. Now for the bad stuff... Now, without saying TOO much, two other people are introduced into the story. However, there is basically NO character development on their part, and by the end of the movie the audience couldn't care less about them. Speaking of the ending, it was a gigantic disappointment. This is one of the top let-downs I've witnessed, seriously. If perhaps the characters and story were given more time to develop, and many things were explained (because there were several holes in this movie, there were many things that needed explanations but were often forgotten) then perhaps the ending would have been more satisfying. The ending was obviously intended to like, "Wow, that's beautiful." Yeah, it isn't./ I Am Legend is everything it's hyped up to be in the beginning. After that, don't keep your expectation up too high. It just isn't worth it.