I Am Legend

Year: 2007

Running time: 101 minutes

Certificate: 15

Language: English

Screenplay: Mark Protosevich, Akiva Goldsman

Director: Francis Lawrence

Starring: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan

Dave.

The last man in New York.

When the news broke that Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend was being adapted again, with Will Smith playing the role of last man alive Robert Neville, it was met with a collective 'meh' the world over. When the impressively creepy trailer first hit, opinions were rethought, and anticipation began to grow. It turns out that the first reaction was the appropriate one, and this film goes to show just how misleading trailers can be.

The first part of the film delivers everything the trailer hinted at. Smith damps down his megastar wattage and hits the right notes as a human all alone in a world full of monsters. Days are spent hunting, driving sports cars and playing golf in an eerily empty New York, while Neville passes the nights hunkered down inside his bath, clutching a weapon as the sounds of a rabid population of roving demons echo through his secured house. Venture inside a building and the tension hits a fever pitch, plunging us into the pitch black, knowing that something is in here with us. A quick glimpse of what humanity has become sends the heart-rate soaring.

But something else now inhabits the city with him...

But then, when Neville captures one of them, we dispense with the terrifying flashes, and for the rest of the film we get a good look at the monsters. I realise the tension generated in the first part of the film could not have been maintained, and that the story demanded we see these things and see a lot of them. It was, however, a big disappointment to find that the monsters that had seemed so terrifying only a moment ago had been reduced to nothing more than a bad CG effect that wouldn't look out of place in The Mummy Returns. It's clear that production design in films is much more important than you might think, and getting it wrong can ruin it all. When the creatures came into the light all the tension drained away, and the film died on its arse at that exact moment. For the rest of the mercifully short running time, I couldn't summon the energy to care what happened to our hero at all. The ending, therefore, which should have been emotional and tension-filled, was typically over the top on the use of computer effects and really rather dull.

A shame.

Score: 4/10

Rachel.

Rachel might one day write something about this, but don't hold your breath, for unlike me, she has a real life. She has, however, scored it.

Score: 6/10

Sukhdev at The Telegraph says pretty much the same thing, but A. O. Scott at the New York Times rates it a little more highly than me.