Disappointing...

Rating: 4/10 (9 March 2009)

I had no idea there had been a book before the movie, so I didn't go in expecting the world. Although everyone had been raving about this, I went in expecting nothing more than some above average escapist action, considering the hype. From the moment they try to instill that heavy sense of depth by having Will Smith breath heavily, scared snotless of the badly CGI'ed monsters, they lost me. Reading what I have of the book, it feels like it might not have come across quite as pretentious if it had stuck to the ideas of the book closer, but it went with the most hackneyed apocalypse scenario, and by limiting the potential of the vampires in order to cut him off so completely from any society, they had to find ways around cinematic stumbling blocks they created themselves. This means a lot of predictable fluffing around, a lot of injecting existential angst into the main character, and not much else.
Somehow I was just expecting something a little more original.