I Am Legend

A film set in an emptied New York. An attempted cancer treatment turned into a virus. Most of the population died, most of the rest changed, and the city is empty. Robert Neville is alive. He is a scientist and the virus did not affect him; he lives alone in Manhattan. His days are on a schedule. Gathering food, hunting deer, broadcasting a signal, coming home at the same hour and shutting himself in. Nobody goes out at night. The changed move in the dark. He is not alone. He has a dog and talks to mannequins. From there the film is both a survival story and a laboratory story. He is looking for a cure in the basement and working on subjects. What the narrative is interested in is not the monster but solitude: its best section is the first half hour, where there is no threat at all, only an empty city. The empty Manhattan is real. The bridge and streets were closed for filming, a permission that had not been given in the city for a long time. The source is a novel by Richard Matheson. The book's ending is entirely different and the meaning of the title appears there. There is an ending that was shot and not released, much closer to the book's idea; it was published on the home edition. The changed creatures were made by computer and that was the film's most criticised feature. Will Smith, Alice Braga and Charlie Tahan are in the cast. Francis Lawrence directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes one-person survival stories. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the book's idea; the released version reverses it.