I Am Legend

Day 149 - 5/29/09 - Movie 149

BEFORE: Will Smith takes over for Charlton Heston in this possibly more faithful (?) adaptation of the same book -

THE PLOT: Years after a plague kills most of humanity and transforms the rest into monsters, the sole survivor in New York City struggles valiantly to find a cure.

AFTER: Well, the special FX are better, and the vampire/mole people are a lot scarier. In "Omega Man" they just had white skin, blank irises and were light-sensitive, but otherwise talked and acted pretty human. Here they seem to be full-on, first-person shooter vampires. The other major change is that the disaster that killed most of the population has changed from a nucular fallout to a virus, one that was intended to cure cancer, but mutated.

The scenes of an almost deserted NYC were very vivid, especially (for me) the scenes around Grand Central Station, since I work in that neighborhood 3 days a week. And with the swine flu - sorry, H1N1 virus - closing NYC schools, it seems particularly timely. The movie does refer to 2009 as the start of the virus, after all.

I still hate Bob Marley music, though. And all these visions of disaster are starting to wear on me. I've got to find a way to lighten this process up.

RATING: 7 out of 10 blood vials