Posthuman Blues

I saw "I Am Legend" today. Besides featuring Will Smith's best performance to date, it's a visual triumph: its depiction of an apocalyptic Manhattan is the most attentive and arresting of any film I can think of (with the possible exception of Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys"). Real effort was spent transforming New York into a weather-beaten carcass, and the result yields moments of genuine visual poetry. Factor in Smith's convincing alienation and the first half of the film is wrenchingly good.

But there are problems. For one, the CGI zombies are too obviously CGI. Computer-generated FX work best when cooking up insects and reptiles, as in "The Mist"; the scrambling cadavers that feast on screen-time in "I Am Legend" move with a biomechanical complexity that betrays their unreality and aggravates the viewer's suspension of disbelief.

But the defining problem with "I Am Legend" is the ending, which insults the intelligence of the rest of the film (and that of its audience) with a whorish appeal to superstition and the oh-so-flawed cinematic wisdom that Love Conquers All. Like "Children on Men," "I Am Legend" succumbs to one of the deadliest science fiction foes of all: undeserved optimism.

(To read author Peter Watts' review, click here.)