Directed by: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Will Smith, a bunch of cgi zompires
Released: December 14, 2007

I had such high expectations of this movie since I first saw the trailer… I could see this film’s enormous potential. The overgrown, abandoned streets of New York had such an eerie feeling to them. Just the thought of it give me the creeps… what would it be like to be the last man on Earth? Well, boring as hell, for one. It’s a little tough to play Day of Defeat by myself. Not to mention the fact that I would eventually bore of the same old porn I have stockpiled (assuming I still had access to electricity after the worldwide demise of the human race… I mean, come on… who still has porno mags?). Oh, and it’d be lonely, maddening, and not to mention pretty damn scary.

The movie started great. It was eerie and unsettling to see the normally busy streets of New York a deserted wasteland. We didn’t know what was out there, but by the way our hero, Mr. Smith, made sure his ass was home by dark to stay locked up nice and tight in his armored condo, we were pretty sure whatever it was is wasn’t good. We see him sleeping in a bathtub, shotgun in hand, and hear as night falls and the unseen creatures we’d suspected must be out there come out to play. We’re treated to flashbacks to the outbreak… a scene reminiscent of the first half of ‘War of the Worlds’: people flippin’ their shit, crying, running, and trying to get the hell out of there. It’s suspenseful, it’s emotional… we see Smith watching his family leave, for what we can pretty much assume is his last time. In the present (future), we see Smith alone, obviously losing touch with reality as he has conversations with mannequins… very weird. And unsettling. It’s nice to see a movie where they show the hero at his or her weakest… just looking for some human contact that we know he is not going to get from that pale, rigid chick with the Britney Spears hair by the porno. We feel sorry for him… we sympathize. We think of what we would do in such a horrible, unthinkable situation.

These scenes work well. Theeeeeen, they had to fuck it all up. Blatently CG zombie / vampires (which I will now refer to as zompires) ramming cars, climbing buildings, running around, getting exploded and roaring. I fucking swear some of the scenes were taken directly from ‘I Robot’. Did they open up a rendering of a zombie, ctrl+c, mouse over to ‘I Robot’’s effects files, select the robots and ctrl+v on the last 30 minutes of the fucking film? I mean, come on! Were they trying to save money here? Was Will Smith’s pay so great that they couldn’t afford a makeup effects crew to doll up a few dozen extras so at least the zompires didn’t look like they were tacked on in post and appeared to be actually fucking THERE?! Lame. So lame.

I’ll admit, Smith carries the movie pretty well for the first half, but unfortunately that can only propel it so far. Eventually all the creepiness as thrown out the window in favor of the usual big-budget blow-em-up extravaganza. Big surprise, eh? I guess I should have been expecting that. Can you say ‘Resident Evil’?

And don’t even get me started with the ending. Sappy, idiotic, and completely unsatisfying.

Overall, I’d give the first half of the movie 4 stars. The second half gets 2. So, what would that be? 3 stars total? I don’t know… I don’t do math. Fuck it, it was an alright movie… but I won’t be going back to the theater to see it again. If I wanted to do that, I’d see ‘The Mist’ again (for the third time).

Oh, and to the little shits that were sitting 2 rows back from me that talked the entire fucking movie: ‘DIE’.