Vermont is for survivors.

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2007)

Hollywood's latest stab at Richard Matheson's classic vampire opus, I Am Legend, is restrained, competent and (at times) thrilling film-making. With that all said, it will not, however, be landing in any cult movie palace near you anytime soon. There are no memorable bits of movie dialogue to savor and repeat. The film's score is pedestrian. The other two survivors--a boy and a young female--are afterthoughts, injected into the movie so Will Smith's character, Robert Neville, can have someone to sound off against. Both late arrivals are tired clichÃ©s. The boy is mute. The woman, although adept with a needle and thread, is lifeless and daffy. I don't believe for a New York Minute they have survived the way she claims they have. And in one of the best examples of our culture being dumbed down that I've ever seen, Neville recites dialog he has memorized from the movie Shrek. Ugh. This is a blatant nod to its predecessor: In The Omega Man, Neville, alone in an abandoned theater, watches and repeats back to the movie screen, relevant thoughts of one of the Woodstock Generation's heavy thinkers. The "The Dark Seekers" are present to entertain the teenagers in the audience, who, lately, have been fed a steady diet of CGI terrors and video games. The ending is ludicrous. Robert Neville's death is anything but heroic. He even tries one last time to reason with the rabid, psychotic creatures. It's beneath him. And us. Laughable. A short time later, on the road to Vermont, the final epilogue ventures into familiar territory with little pay off. The woman gets the final word. Typical.