Upon fading in, the monotone sounds of newscasters describing the state of the world have uneasiness given the silence in the background. However, once we cut to Dr. Alice Krippin (Emma Thompson), who claims they've cured cancer, the stillness around the dialogue increases the eerie atmosphere in this opening sequence. Then, suddenly, we fast forward to three years later, viewing a desolate, collapsed New York City as a haunting image. 

 

While action performances tend not to be as revered as dramatic roles, I Am Legend is Will Smith's career-defining performance, superior to The Pursuit of Happiness or King Richard. 

 

I Am Legend was released when Smith was considered the most bankable star in Hollywood due to his charisma and ability to waver between drama and comedy convincingly. I Am Legend provides a vehicle for Will Smith to command the film at his own pace while demonstrating his dramatic talents through a unique lone-wolf portrayal. It's an astonishing feat for an actor to maintain the audience's emotional engagement in a solitary portrayal. Smith's committed intensity to this role epitomizes his leading man qualities while even leaving room for comedic moments that shockingly land due to his charisma. 

 

 I Am Legend is genuinely the one-person show it's billed as. Smith dominates every scene, while he becomes more unnerved each day. Smith plays the role of Dr. Robert Neville, who, to his own knowledge, is one of the last humans alive. He is determined to stay at ground zero, to cure the disease precisely where it started, which means living a dangerous life with only his dog Sam at his side. 

 

Director Francis Lawrence brilliantly sets up this post-apocalyptic world by taking us through the preparation and precautions Neville must take each night to survive. The shrieks, the banging, and the sound editing implant a growing fear into the audience. The set design of creepily decaying posters, destroyed buildings, and grass growing on the streets depicts a decaying world. 

 

The infected that hunt Neville at night are more horrifying when they are in hiding, proving the point of less is more with horror movie villains. Hearing their shrieking, banging, and animalistic sounds sewed fear early on in the film. Unfortunately, their menacing presence is mitigated once the hunters are visually revealed. Nevertheless, the tension between the hunters lasts intensely for almost an hour through the film, maintaining a frightening adversary. 

 

In the film's most horrifying scene, Sam chases a deer into a large building, which causes Neville to sprint after her into the darkness. As Neville's footsteps become what separates him from life and death, his flashlight gives us a haunting peak into a hive of hunters asleep while they stand sleeping and breathing vigorously. The scene escalates to a peak when Neville painfully says goodbye to Sam as he can't find her and can't risk dying in this building until Sam pops out. Neville runs towards the window desperately for survival as the seekers sprint ferociously after him. Relating to vampires, the seeker that jumps out the window at Neville is burned and killed by the sun's light, giving a narrative element that will come into play later on. 

 

Besides Smith's performance and Lawrence's tension-filled direction, an impactful element of I Am Legend is the genre-mashing apparent throughout the script. It initially comes off as a post-apocalyptic thriller/action film. However, as the narrative unfolds, the moments that turn into horror sequences are the most outstanding, rivaling modern horror films. I Am Legend tells a somber and demanding story for a Hollywood blockbuster film, suggesting the crossing over of genres can lead to unprecedented success. The remarkable moments in I Am Legend represents the triumph of throwing a bit of risk at a Hollywood thriller. 

 

As the story continues, Will Smith's infectious pathos emotionally draws us into his deteriorating world. The seekers he's pitted against start to show an intelligence he didn't think possible, nor did the audience. They make a strategic move against Neville, breaking his fragile psychological state. Loneliness and dread have driven Neville's attention away from being focused on precautions. As the seekers' plan works, Neville lets down his guard and is captured by a rope trap and hung upside down, being knocked by his collision with the ground. Hours later, he awakens to Sam barking at him while realizing in a haze that dawn is coming and crawls towards his car as infected dogs sprint and attack Neville and Sam. Sam sacrifices and protects Neville to the point of being infected. Neville has to put down Sam alone as Neville cannot cure the infection within her. The camera focuses on Smith's face as he regretfully and painfully puts an infected Sam to sleep, giving Sam peace. While this action alleviated Sam, Neville must live alone now and have another scar in this unforgiving world.  

 

Neville's expression shows defeat and hopelessness as he spirals toward a harrowing end. When Neville finally loses hope and tries to commit suicide by killing as many seekers as possible, a woman named Anna miraculously saves him. She is traveling with a young kid named Ethan, and seeing Neville's interaction with them portrays the struggle to reintegrate into society after an apocalypse of this magnitude. It's almost unbelievable for Neville to witness humans speaking to him. 

 

The most informative and expositional dialogue about Neville's world comes from his discussion with Anna, who still has faith in her religion and believes god still has a plan for those alive. 

 

Neville loses his temper and ragefully yells at her:

 

 "Let me tell you about God's plan. Seven billion people on Earth when the infection hit. Five point four billion people dead. Crashed and bled out. Dead. Less than one-percent immunity. That left twelve million healthy people like you, me, and Ethan. The Other five hundred and eighty-eight million turned into your dark seekers, and then they got hungry, and they killed and fed on everybody. Everybody! Every single person that you or I has ever known is dead! Dead! There is no God!"

 

The enraged passion from Smith in this mini-monologue is a powerful and captivating statement that provides enlightening background information while explaining Neville's pessimism. However, his speech also brings up the concept of science and religion that never becomes fully fleshed out. If there is a religious motif within the film, it's muddled and overridden by the bombastic third act. Anna tells Neville that God has told her of a survivor's colony in Vermont, a belief that causes Neville to scoff. The movie's inability to keep a footing in its third act essentially robs it from becoming an exemplary Hollywood blockbuster that would've broken the stagnant norm. Instead, the film cannot confront the more profound themes of faith and hopelessness it lazily injects into the screenplay. 

 

It's rare for the masses to prefer a film's alternate DVD ending, but the executive decision to keep the original conclusion mutes Neville's vision's narrative and emotional impact. 

 

Among others, a strikingly negative aspect of the film is the questionable CGI of the "dark seekers," which breaks the realism since this group of villains are the main antagonists. 

 

Instead, the conclusion to Neville's mission is deceptive to the film's message and has an outright contradictory moment of realization that derails the story. Conversely, The film constructs a breathtaking depiction of Neville's solitude and the human condition in extreme circumstances in a manner that Hollywood blockbusters wouldn't dare to explore. There is praise deserved towards I Am Legend for its successful portrait of various genre traits and Smith's captivating performance. Unfortunately, the narrative faults, shoddy third act, and technical issues weigh down I Am Legend from becoming a triumph while making it settle to be an intriguing, emotional viewing with unfulfilled promise. 

 

Since Lawrence, scriptwriters, or Warner Brothers executives decided to deviate from the brilliant source material, using the alternate ending would've fulfilled the film's hopeful goal, which is epitomized in this quote from Neville,

 

 "The people who are making this world darker are not taking a day off, how can I? Light up the darkness."