Shame

Rating: 5/10 (31 December 2007)

So we come to the yearly boxing day movie. Last year, bizarrely, it was Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (or what ever the hell it was) and next year it'll be the reboot of Star Trek. This year it was I Am Legend. Firstly, I want to say that this is in no way a bad film and I have certainly seen much worse this year (Hitman anyone?) but it isn't great either. It kinda fits nicely in the middle as one of these interesting non-entities that could've been so much more.
Let's get one thing straight, the book is much better. Robert Nevill is, in fact the last person on the planet that is now inhabited by Vampires. They taunt him every evening into leaving his home which, at times, he seriously struggles to resist. But it's the scientific take on the vampire legend that I found most interesting. It attempted to find I logical reason for the extreme allergies to sunlight, garlic and holy water.
The movie ditches the vampires and changes the creatures into "Dark Seekers", mutated humans that are still allergic to sunlight but are far from the intelligent monsters from the novel. They scream and squeak and are, frankly, a bit rubbish. Director Francis (Constantine) Lawrence opted to ditch the men in make-up for entirely CGI creations. His reasons were that he felt they were not believable. Bit mistake. The CGI on these things is truly terrible. In a year when we've had Transformers and Pirates 3, it shows that special effects can now look REAL. These beasts look less than convincing and, thus, fail to scare. How can you be frightened when they look like they're sculpted from play-doh? Will Smith, however, is terrific. Any lesser actor would've failed at the task ahead of him. He spends the majority of the film talking to his dog. Think Cast Away on a worldwide scale. Smith's Nevill is man about ready to break. One particularly moving scene shows him begging a department store mannequin to say hello.
The opening scenes are excellent too, with Smith wondering around a deserted New York. Visually, the bigger budget has allowed for more impressive deserted city sequences than the 28 Days/Weeks Later films allowed. Take a look at the cheeky nods to other Warner Bros titles that have been in the pipeline over the years (most noticeably, the poster in Time Square for a Batman Vs. Superman film).
Essencially, this is a film of two halves. The first being an excellent post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller, the second being your bog standard zombie b-movie. It's a shame as the first half really is very good but all falls apart towards the end. Matherson's book had a very pessimistic view of humanity and his ending really is truly ironic and deeply unnerving. The movie couldn't help being Hollywood. It sh*ts all over the idea as to why it is called I Am Legend, twisting it for a more uplifting finale. It's a shame that Hollywood rarely goes so dark. Had it kept it's ending, the film would've worked much better. Oh well, at least it was better than Constantine.
3/5