I Am Legend (2007) Review

Written by: jackalqueen   

What a waste of a good idea!  If they'd gone for moody and sinister this could have been a decent horror film but instead they had to fill it with the usual Will Smith one-liners which spoiled any chance of atmosphere and the ending seemed totally rushed and is the weakest part of the whole film.
The basic story is that a cure for cancer has mutated into a virus which has wiped out most of humanity.  Robert Neville (Will Smith's character) is the last man in New York and spends his time trying to contact other survivors and hunting vampires so he can experiment on them to find a cure for the virus.

The film starts near the end of the story and has flashbacks showing how things came to be the way they are but they are so drawn out through the film that by the end, i didn't really care. Call me picky but 'The Last Man on Earth' is not the last man on earth, even without the vampires, so why have that as the tagline?  The trailers also imply that he doesn't know about the vampires when in the film he obviously does - why bother misleading people? 
The film doesn't explain how he still has electricity, how he single-handedly reinforced his house security to that of a fortress, how a vampire (ie. the undead...) has a heartbeat when hooked up to a monitor, how something which is already dead can be killed by a virus which didn't kill it in the first place, how a series of bombs didn't kill the vampires but then a single hand grenade does...

There were just too many things which didn't add up for me and it's not a 'leave your brain at the door' kind of film where you can just ignore the facts and watch the action.  The parting line of the film explains that the main character (played by Will Smith remember!) is in his 50's - that about sums up how ridiculous it all is.