Never rises above the level of cliché

Rating: 5/10 (1 September 2011)

"I Am Legend" is the third film to have been based on Richard Matheson's novel, and the only one to keep Matheson's original title (even if the significance of that title is somewhat altered). The others were 1964's "The Last Man on Earth", which I have never seen, and "The Omega Man" from 1971. (There was a second adaptation of the novel made in 2007, "I Am Omega", which again I have not seen).
Like the original novel and "The Omega Man", "I Am Legend" is an example of post-apocalyptic science fiction. The action takes place in 2012 in New York. (The novel and "The Omega Man" were both set in Los Angeles). Most of the human race has been wiped out by a virus. In "The Omega Man" the source of the virus was a war fought with biological weapons between China and the Soviet Union; in this version it is the result of genetic engineering designed to develop a cure for cancer. This difference perhaps reflects the way in which our view of the world has changed in the intervening 36 years. In the Cold War years of the seventies our greatest fear was the outbreak of World War III; today we are much more frightened of the possible consequences of misguided tinkering with nature, even when that tinkering is carried out for benign reasons. The virus is known as KV, short for Krippin Virus, named after its inventor but with a possible reference to the notorious murderer Dr Crippen.
The central character is Robert Neville, a military research scientist who believes himself to be the only surviving human who is immune to the virus. He lives alone in his Manhattan apartment with only his faithful German Shepherd dog Samantha for company. (New York still seems surprisingly well cared for; I would have thought that a city which has been deserted for three years would have fallen into a much more dilapidated, ruinous state than the one we see here). His days are spent in conducting experiments on infected rats to find a cure for the virus; for food he raids supplies from abandoned homes and stores or hunts the deer which have moved back into the city. He faces, however, many dangers, and not only from other wild animals. Not all those humans who were infected by the virus died. There were many survivors, but they have degenerated into aggressive beings known as "Darkseekers" because they are intolerant of daylight and hence nocturnal. (An idea doubtless borrowed from vampire legends). During the daytime Neville is safe from these creatures, but during the night he dare not venture outside.
The Darkseekers are not quite the same as "the Family", the light-sensitive albinos who played the equivalent role in "The Omega Man". Although the Family were Neville's sworn enemies, they retained their human intelligence and had a relatively sophisticated system of beliefs based upon a fanatical religion and a hatred of the corrupt old scientific, industrialised world. The Darkseekers are savage feral beings, more like animals than humans and lacking the intelligence of the Family.
There is, in fact, a big difference between "The Omega Man" and "I Am Legend". The earlier film was essentially a philosophical, anti-racist and religious parable. At the end Neville, played in that film by Charlton Heston, becomes a symbolic Christ-figure giving his blood to save the world. The later film is much more of a straightforward thriller; although religious ideas are not entirely absent, they are much more played down, and there is no attempt to present an anti-racist message. (Possibly because such messages are today seen as less controversial and more hackneyed than they were in the early seventies).
Will Smith is better here than Heston was in "The Omega Man" which is not one of his better performances. Whereas Heston's Neville starts off as a cynic and ends up as a symbol rather than a person, Smith does at least attempt to make his character more rounded and believable, a man tormented by loneliness and despair. Overall, however, I would rate "The Omega Man" as the better film. It is not without its flaws but its philosophical themes do at least give it a greater depth than the average zombie flick. The "survivors-of-an-epidemic-fighting-off-disease-ridden-zombies" version of the post-apocalyptic thriller was already well established in 1971, and in the four decades since then has become a cliché with films like "28 Days Later" and all those "Night of the Living Dead" sequels and spin-offs. Despite Smith's efforts, "I Am Legend" never really rises above the level of that cliché. 5/10