I Am Legend: Review By siege223

First the good news: Will Smith did a great acting job. The special effects were good but a little over the top. Also, most of the time, they were a bit too quick to truly appreciate, and the film relied too heavily on them. The movie did a good job of building suspense for the first third of the movie or so, but it was all downhill from there.

Now for the bad news: After seeing The Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price and I Am Legend, I'm beginning to think the storyline itself is the problem. I'm a big fan of post apocalypse movies, but something's just...off about this story. I had a hard time believing the nightwalkers. They had the intelligence of humans in some ways, yet were totally animalistic in others--and not in a cave man way either, which might have been more believable. The psyche of Dr. Neville wasn't very well-written either. Smith did the best with the material he was given, but the material was not great.

All in all, I have to say that I preferred The Last Man on Earth. In the 60s, they couldn't rely so heavily on special effects, and so the story itself was better written. The one thing I liked more about I Am Legend (besides the actor) was the more hopeful ending.