As anyone that has read my previous reviews can see, I am a big fan of the undead. I do like the vampires, but I also like their more socially awkward cousins, the zombie. One of my favorite things to do as a child was sit with my stepmother and watch monster movies on TV (I was nine), and one of the most memorable was Night of the Living Dead. Most notably, because it was my entry into “Realism,” which is just a fancy way of saying that everyone dies. Which is pretty realistic, come to think about it.

I am a fan of the old school zombie. I find something far more sinister in the slow, shuddering walks and the indefatigableness of the slow zombie. They. Will. Not. Stop. Unless they are eating your brains. So, when I found out that I Am Legend was about zombies, and in particular, fast zombies, it took me a long time to see it. Far be it from me, Zombie Snob Extraordinaire, to deign to watch something so uncanon. This vegetarian would rather eat brains herself. As it turns out, I did end up watching it, and I liked it quite a bit. For awhile, at least.

So, besides fast zombies, I Am Legend is about a doctor named Robert Neville (played by Will Smith) who is a survivor of a virus that has killed off most of humanity. Of the other survivors of the plague, most of them evolved into fast, strong zombies with alopecia and UV sensitivity as well as a real hate on for the survivors who were unchanged by the virus. Of course, Neville is the only unchanged survivor in Manhattan. He has a daily routine that involves scavenging for supplies, making radio broadcasts, and testing animals for a cure to the degenerative, zombie-inducing effects of the virus.

When he thinks he has found a cure, he kidnaps a female zombie hoping he can cure her. However, the zombies don’t take to kindly to this and set a trap to kill him. He barely escapes (and I can’t tell you how, because I still can’t watch that scene). The next night, he tries to kill all the zombies, but is almost killed himself until two unchanged survivors rescue him. They give him news that there is a survivor’s camp in Vermont.

The next night, zombies attack! Survivors escape! The kidnapped zombie woman is sort of cured! All at the same time, actually, but not without some sacrifice. And Neville becomes a legend.

I really liked this movie after I saw it. There was one scene in particular where I bawled like an angry baby (although that’s not unusual -- I cried at Zack and Miri Make a Porno -- probably I should cry less). I thought Will Smith was convincing as someone who was trying to keep it together under the circumstances, and deal with his essential solitary confinement. The zombies weren’t too bad either. I don’t know when the technologies to portray something like this right will ever come, but they were convincing villains. The ending was good and bittersweet, with the hope of a future. But I have some qualifications to my affection for this film, and most of this has to do with I Am Legend’s precursors.

This movie, I Am Legend, has a couple of previous incarnations. The most recent one is a Charlton Heston film called The Omega Man. Frankly, I’m not sure how these two movies even compare. I often find Charlton Heston to be his own cartoon character. He always plays himself, or a version of himself that is always overacted. And those weren’t zombies so much as weird, cultish albinos. What really disappointed me in the end about I Am Legend isn’t that bit of craziness -- it’s the original book that shares it’s title.

Suddenly, I hear the chorus of audience members who are yelling that the book is always better than the movie. I know! I know! But this is different. In the movie, the embattled Dr. Neville overcomes the zombies, sacrificing himself so that humanity can go on. In the book, Dr. Neville sacrifices himself because he realizes that, in a land full of vampires (they were zombie-like vampires in the book), he is the monster. Unable to cope with how terrifying he must be, he ends it all and laughs at the irony.

It takes me back to an interesting conversation I had with a relative over Christmas about marketing, and how we have all these fancy advertising agencies, and yet nothing is ever creative. Perhaps truly creative ideas succumb to death-by-committee? I feel that this also happens with movies. We take a book that is paradigm changing and has a message that we don’t always hear: that maybe we’re the monsters sometimes. That we humans can think we’re doing good, but actually we are doing really bad things instead. That sometimes we have to accept that and step out of the game in order for things to be set to right. Instead, the entire moral of the story is surgically removed so that no one has to think about it too much. Then, in 1971, we add Charlton Heston and crazy albino Family people with no purpose. And in 2007 we include CGI zombies. The protagonist gets to be the hero and there is the glimmering hope of “survivors” somewhere that aren’t pale or made from CGI. Go Hollywood.

Frankly, I liked that we might be the monsters. For this reason, I only hesitatingly recommend the movie. As a movie and nothing else, it’s really great. Before I knew the better ending, I liked the adaptation. But now I cannot unknow how much greater it could have been. Such is life.

  -- Sara Paige