Oops…

I re-read the post I made yesterday, and despite the title, there was no more than a fleeting thought on the movie I am Legend. Let me correct that here. I am going to review the movie, so if you don’t want to know what happens…

The basic premise of the movie is this: a man-made virus that was made to cure cancer mutates and “changes” all but a fraction of the global population into creatures of the night. No, not vampires, but what they refer to as “darkseekers.” Will Smith’s character, Robert Neville, is military and he has stayed in the city to try to fix the outbreak and help humanity. It is slightly reminiscent of Cast Away in that for the majority of the movie it is only the main character and a non-human supporting character. In this case it is a dog that Neville’s daughter gave him before they were killed trying to evacuate the city. Neville, like Chuck Noland, goes a little stir crazy after 1,000 days of solitude. Neville puts mannequins in the video store that he is meticulously going through for entertainment. He even goes so far as to flirt with one of the female “patrons.” On one of his outings, Neville comes into contact with a different sort of darkseeker. This one he notes seems to have lost it’s sense of self-preservation and comes out into the sunlight which it has a potentially deadly reaction to. Little does Neville know, but this particular darkseeker is organized and has some position of leadership in the darkseeker nests. Several times after that this leader is present at attacks on Neville. At one of these attacks, Neville is overwhelmed and is rescued at the last minute by 2 other survivors, a woman and a small boy. Because he is injured, he does not realize the woman is taking him home, allowing the leader and the other darkseekers to track them back to his home. As the darkseekers attack, Neville discovers that his latest attempt to cure the darkseekers and turn them back into humans worked. To save the cure, he gives it to the woman and crams her and the kid into what looks like an old coal chute as the leader and darkseekers break in and kill him. The movie ends with the woman and child making it to a colony of survivors somewhere in Vermont.

I liked this movie for several reasons. It was a different twist on a zombie movie, but it wasn’t really a zombie movie. It wasn’t a boring movie, there was something going on almost all the time, unlike Cast Away. Plus, going to see it with a friend helped make it an enjoyable evening.