Robinson Crusoe amongst the Vampires

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2007)

This is a bad film on so many levels. What was so shocking about the authors original idea which evolved into his so-so book ( Robinson Crusoe with vampires) and then a series of movies ( Apart from loneliness and isolation - turning that idea around and instead of us/Crusoe disappearing from society, society disappearing from under us ) is how do we feel about our societies history and it's sudden total elimination. That the creative team behind this remake went back to the original Vampire scenario - appeals only to escapists and kids with little or no thought of anyone else but themselves and so turns the movie into a fantasy whereas the last outing ( The omega Man 1971 ) of this story was a thoughtful play on modern man and his superstitious dark side. which when things turn ugly always resurfaces. Science and modernity in the backlash are seen as evil. (Maybe we are, This movie may make 500 million plus profit which will be divided to fit snugly into less than twenty pockets.)
No more triple heart bypass's, no more rockets to the moon, no more great Art, literature or music and no more Hollywood blockbusters and nothing or no one to remember or record it all. If our hero gets a toothache let alone needs an operational procedure he is done for. In this retelling there is no time to linger on what has been lost. Man's last 10-40 thousand years of history swept away. The chances of a plague making this happen are low yet a fundamentalist revolution is far more likely. In the next fifty to a hundred years the history that we know may well be destroyed and replaced by fundamentalist doctrine.This was the intellectual element to the Heston film ( The Omega Man 1971 ) The idea that the virus infested were intent on destroying everything that mankind had made and returning to a superstitious pre-modern state. That is truly scary stuff, Vampires are just silly.
To scare kids you need visually scary monsters but these CGI creatures were awful. To make an 'animal out of man' takes an off-centre genius like the ( Alien 1979 ) designer H.R. Giger. Not a bunch of CGI hacks and this is what we are given. Look at the directors last fantasy film (Constantine 2005) it has the same uninspired creatures running through it. Men in latex would have been scarier and more convincing. Three years is a short amount of time for virus infected humans to mutate into super-agile monsters. The movie (Twenty eight days later 2002 ) had a far more plausible scenario for a virus epidemic than to turn humans into vampires ( In 28 days... the infected become ferocious and dehumanised like wild dogs but wore themselves out after 28 days ). This movie felt like a continuation of the Resident Evil movies. They just stole the plot from 'I am Legend' and Mr.Smith continues where Ms.Milla Jovovich left off. A very far fetched and silly, ignorantly supernatural adrenaline fuelled feast and not much else.
Plot holes that jumped out were... An out of towner is able to find her way 30 blocks or so from Grand Central to Washington square at night ( With the New Yorker in-tow out cold ) with probably well over a million creatures roaming the streets ( remember some roads are completely blocked with abandoned traffic and tanks etc..) Plus how was she able or even willing to follow him around at night in order to save him ?
Sanctuary is a sort of white picket fenced idyllic farm community. This commune is surrounded by a 5 and half billion creatures who will live and continue to breed and multiply. How are the survivors going to use the antidote ? It seems they would have to take the infected one by one and do a complete dialysis to remove the infected blood - How long is that going to take - to do a hundred let alone a million or a billion ?
A creature that is able to set up an elaborate trap ( having an understanding of physics in order to set up the pulley system trap) and having the nuance to delicately move a mannequin many blocks and know to place it on a section of road he uses. Then when this smart contemplative creature finally confronts his prey he can only resort to banging his head up against a glass wall ? Are we to put this down to excitement or an enormous plot/ character hole ?
Finally the biggest hole - about a world without men constantly looking after it - A single small fire with no one to stop it would have raged and destroyed the whole of Manhattan years ago. But the scariest idea - Imagine the amount of nuclear power stations ( 438 operational nuclear power stations as of 2001 ), and other hazardous facilities, military etc.. that would blow up if not attended world wide. There would be a thousand year nuclear winter and every living thing, the creatures, Smith and any other survivors, even the gazelles would be dead.
What will keep people wanting to see this awful movie is Will Smith who it seems is genuinely loved by one and all. Unless he is a moron he should show more conscientiousness about the movies he makes. For a man with this much power could change attitudes around the world with the projects he chooses or make bad Vampire movies and line his pockets.
With the world in such a mess why are movies like this still being made ? This film doesn't bare thinking about during or after viewing - for we humans like to get in the dark, alone amongst the flickering lights, to just relish the moment without thought - How much different than the fictional vampires in this movie are we ?