by Rebecca Mikulin

Created on: April 03, 2009   Last Updated: April 04, 2009

Just when we think recent movies have completely overdone the zombie theme, someone comes out with something enough different from all the others to warrant a bit of attention...and it's not just because Will Smith is in it.

Robert Neville (Smith) is the only survivor of New York City, who has shut himself away in an effort to find a cure for the devastating virus that has turned nearly the entire population of Earth into zombie-esque creatures. Every time he gets close something goes wrong, but he keeps throwing himself into it day after day with his own blood as the basis for a serum. Some humans were naturally immune to the virus - some 12,000,000 in the entire world, our hero tells us. Unfortunately most (Robert thinks possibly all) of those immune have already been killed by the creatures that their loved ones and neighbors became.

Now these are not your average garden-variety zombies (a la Resident Evil) that know nothing but eating the people in front of them and are incapable of any other thought. These guys are smart - they can set traps, form armies, and learn from their mistakes. Luckily for Neville, they can't go outside during the day thanks to a marked sensitivity to light, so he's just very careful to go home while it's still light so they don't find out where he lives. The virus can spread through broken skin or through the air, just like most of the more mundane viruses we normally contend with.

We've all heard talk of a "super bug" developing due to the overuse of medication in today's world. This story just takes it one step further into a bug that has the very real potential of wiping out the entire human race...without even killing them. This is a story of a man and his dog versus an entire hostile world in which, as far as he knows, he is the only hope of there ever being humans as we know them again.

My favorite thing about this whole movie is the setting. Imagine a New York City in which occupants left their cars in the middle of a traffic jam and never came back, where people just disappeared leaving the buildings virtually untouched except by time and the elements, the streets are overgrown and massive herds of deer run along with more exotic wildlife that presumably escaped from the zoos when their handlers "got sick". This set was done extremely well, and the story does a great job of portraying the quirks of a man who hasn't seen another normal, speaking human in many years.

For acting, Will Smith is about the only one we get to see

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>