Ignore the predictably dodgy science and plot-fissures, and you have a tentpole picture that doesn’t, for once, insult its audience’s intelligence. The little details ring true, such as when Neville chides his dog for not eating her vegetables - he’s anthropomorphised her so completely that he’s forgotten she’s a carnivore. It’s a great opening sequence, especially when it transpires that Neville’s actually on the hunt, rifle in lap, seeking some venison to supplement his tinned provisions.įor a big studio genre film, I Am Legend goes a surprisingly long way to explore psychology, and Smith fearlessly dives headfirst into the mind of an individual who’s had no human contact for almost 40 months. When we’re introduced to this landscape’s only human inhabitant - one Robert Neville (Will Smith), who is conveniently both highly militarily trained and a brilliant virologist - he’s seemingly enjoying his desolate environment, redlining a sports car through town, his faithful canine companion Sam (best animal performance of the decade, say us) gazing happily out of the passenger window. Yet it’s also oddly beautiful - a city where nature has regained her hold and the tiniest animal sounds are no longer smothered by the deafening cough of engines. In one sense it’s terrifying -the Mary Celeste as an entire conurbation. Skyscrapers still shout of the glories of mankind’s achievements, but with no-one to hear them they serve only to cast long shadows. Shoulder-height grass wafts lazily in Times Square, disturbed only by the occasional herd of deer. Smartly employing the sharp eye of Lord Of The Rings lenser Andrew Lesnie, Lawrence presents to us a New York free of all human presence. By night, it’s a drooling, lurching, crushingly stupid and clumsily executed VFX disaster.

By day, it’s a limber, thoughtful and supremely effective drama. Yet, despite retaining the tweaked-vamp threat, Akiva Goldsman and Mark ‘Poseidon’ Protosevich’s script, as realised by MTV alumnus Francis Lawrence, better resembles a werewolf or Dr.

In the novel on which this moody blockbuster is based, Richard Matheson offered a neat sci-fi twist on the vampire mythos, imagining a world-destroying spore which would turn everyday folk into blood-lusting creatures of midnight.

I am legend new york