Zombies, again

Rating: 7/10 (9 November 2008)

I know that this movie is based on a "legendary" book, and I presume that it received a lot of hype when it came out stateside. From the fact that it's already out on DVD, I guess it didn't do too well at the box-office.
I caught it on DVD and without expecting too much, which allowed the movie to surprise me positively. It is very entertaining while you're still trying to figure out what the duck is going on. Will Smith's acting is outstanding, and the movie builds up the suspense very effectively. It's an intelligent and at the same time entertaining movie which brings a fresh breath of death to the often rather stolid horror genre.
That said, it's not perfect either. For instance, the CGI-zombies don't work that well (they look fake, like out of a computer game), and there are many other elements of the movie which overstretch the viewer's credulity for the cheap benefit of a quick thrill (strangely in those movies, the viewer usually buys the general premise -- aliens from Nebulon-3 have invaded earth and are now feeding on puppy's brains -- but gets stuck on fairly minor details such as "Sgt Brubaker fires 13 rounds of transmuto-semtex at the slime-bot when the clip of the T7/A1 holds only 12"). Right at the beginning, for example, Will Smith hunts deer in a ghost-towned New York City by pursuing them in his shiny Ford Mustang -- cool, spectacular, but also pretty moronic, especially as it later turns out that while he never manages to shoot a single animal for food, he has absolutely no difficulty capturing those blood-guzzling zombies alive. Less would often have been more in this movie, the zombies would have been more effective if they had been less visible, the basement lab would have been more believable if it had been a bit less vulcano-lair-ish and his flat more plausible if it had looked less like straight out of the Ikea catalogue, etc. The movie is best in its quiet moments, like when we realise how the relationship between Neville and his dog represents his last bond to his previous life, or how he uses his daily routine of "renting" DVDs from a store to keep sane (with varying success).
The movie kind of jumps the shark when Anna and that little boy arrive, but luckily it wraps up the story fairly neatly and quickly from there on.
And I really can't get over the fact that Anna's never heard of Bob Marley. She's never seen his face, heard his name, and doesn't recognise even his biggest hits. Even my grandma can sing the chorus to "No Woman No Cry". From that point on, I was rooting for the zombies.
Overall, not a classic but still a solid, entertaining, thrilling movie, with a fantastic performance by Will Smith, and a new twist on an old theme.