the bad grammar in the title should be a giveaway

Rating: 1/10 (31 December 2007)

I have three major gripes about this film, all of which have numerous sub-gripes. The first and most obvious is the extremely terrible quality and extremely high quantity of Computer Generated effects. When I say the effects are bad, I refer to the zombie like "infected," zombie dogs, the deer that roam the streets, the lions that escaped from the zoo, right down to the butterfly that Will Smith's dog looks at. These have to be the worst special effects of the 21st century. Not a single thing is convincing for one second. What's even more puzzling than the inexplicably poor effects is the sheer amount of them. Will Smith captures a zombie and brings it to his lab. Even the body on the table is computer generated. Could they REALLY not get a person to lay on table and do nothing for a few minutes? I'm not the type of person who goes to the movies to see special effects, but when they are so bad as to ruin any suspense or drama by taking you out of the movie, then they are an unquestionably bad part of the film.
All this talk about the "infected" brings me to my second major gripe: the screenplay. Basically, it makes no sense. Never mind that zombies are boring movie villains anyway, but the script attributes a certain set of characteristics to them and they act completely differently from those. Will Smith's character, after an un-scary run in with a pack of them, describes how "social devolution is complete," and that "all traces of human behavior are gone." This would suggest to the viewer that these zombies would have no community, communication, or group mentality, right? WRONG! These zombies are actually kind of the opposite of how the movie describes them. They live and work in groups, have a pretty well defined leader, can coordinate, organize, and execute a pretty elaborate plan to trap Will Smith, and they have apparently managed to domesticate murderous zombie-dogs. Okay, so you'd think these sort of smart zombies aren't that lame after all, right? WRONG AGAIN!! Despite all this, they still fall victim to the trappings of a Hollywood movie that caters to the lowest possible denominator. These infected humans have apparently forgotten how to speak, so instead they run really fast and yell loudly, entering rooms only to tear out the insulation from the wall, or breaking through glass by banging their heads on it, I suppose all in a grand attempt to "scare" the audience.
The script is terrible for reasons other than the "infected" too. Towards the end, two random human survivors show up and "rescue" Will Smith. In the minutes immediately preceding this, the action flashes back to the evacuation of Manhattan, during which all the bridges connecting the island to anywhere else are demolished. The very first shot of the film shows the flooded entrance to the Holland Tunnel. These mysterious survivors brought a car of their own and came from Maryland, so this begs the question HOW THE HELL DID THEY GET HERE? Needless to say, this question is never answered and doesn't really need to be, because these two survivors are so annoying that you'll be praying for them to leave. The kid is the generic creepy type who doesn't say a damn thing, and his mom is the generic "God is killing us all but God can save us" person who exists in all apocalypse-related movies. It also just so happens that these two morons accidentally lead the blood thirsty CG zombies to Will Smith's house. They crash his party, leading to a dumb, clichéd ending that is clearly trying to emulate better films like 28 Days Later or Children of Men.
I guess my third gripe is that the film creates no drama or atmosphere at all. The director resorts to really lame horror movie tricks to "keep the audience on edge," although all he managed to do was keep me from falling asleep. For example, and this is used an awful lot, when Will Smith is closing his windows at night, they make an unnecessarily loud noise. Creepy... He also creates a lot of false tension: when Will Smith is evacuating his family (in a flashback) people are being tested for the killer virus. His wife is marked as infected, but 30 seconds later, after Will screams for a little bit, she is scanned again and this time she's fine. Oh, Francis Lawrence, you sure are a clever one... But perhaps the lamest and most mood- killing flaw like this is how the movie tries to (and fails at) being symbolic or meaningful. Will Smith comparing himself to a Bob Marley song is especially cringe-worthy, but not so much as the false imagery of a butterfly (explaining it would require a lot of effort that I frankly don't want to devote to reviewing a movie as awful as this, so just take my word for it, please.). The only scene that does hold any meaningful drama is when Will Smith has to kill his dog. Even still I can't escape the feeling that the plot device of a dead dog is almost like a "free pass" that the film uses to involve the audience. Nevertheless, when that is the best scene from your movie, you've failed on an epic level.
The saddest part about all this is that the basic premise is actually pretty intriguing, even worse is how Will Smith, who I really like in other movies, is betrayed by the material as he tries to work up the courage to say hello to a mannequin woman.
This movie is just a complete failure, an example of the Law of Diminishing Returns, the phenomenon of getting less output out of more and more input. This movie cost $150 million to make, and is just a shadow of the classic films it wants so desperately to be.