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‘I Am Legend’ is a chilling creep show

Will Smith finally fulfills the hype in this gripping sci-fi/horror tale

There was a time, when horror movies featured science gone awry, that audiences could feel secure in the knowledge that blame would be placed at the feet of some madman who tried creating killer shrews or resurrecting the dead or somehow otherwise “tampering in God’s domain.”

It’s a definite statement on our times that the terrifying “I Am Legend” — Hollywood’s third crack at Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel — begins with a placid Emma Thompson explaining to a TV interviewer that she has developed a helpful virus that has cured cancer. Cut to a title card reading “Three years later” superimposed over the abandoned streets of Manhattan, now covered in abandoned cars and sprinkled with weeds poking through the asphalt.

By day, the sole inhabitant of New York City is Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith), an Air Force officer who is immune to the virus. He spends his days driving around with his faithful dog Sam, hunting the deer that now run in herds through Times Square; he also checks out DVDs, sends radio dispatches to other possible survivors, and fortifies his home. He spends so much time on the latter because, as the song says, the freaks come out at night. Or rather, the zombie/vampire victims of the virus. Most of humanity died outright, and those who didn’t became flesh-eating creatures who are terrified by the sun.

In flashbacks, we see Neville trying to get his wife and daughter out of the city as the government imposes a quarantine and blows up all bridges between Manhattan Island and the mainland. We also learn the psychological toll on Neville from the triple whammy of survivor’s guilt, three years of solitude, and the ongoing failures of his attempts to cure the virus. (There’s an extraordinary scene where Smith finally finds two fellow survivors, and it actually takes him a moment to remember how to have a conversation with someone who isn’t a dog or a mannequin.)

It’s easy to go into “I Am Legend” with low expectations. Director Francis Lawrence’s résumé consists of music videos and the ludicrous Keanu Reeves’ vehicle “Constantine.” Smith has generally been one of the movies’ most self-satisfied and least compelling performers. But the film crackles with intelligence and terror — zombies have been, pardon the pun, done to death in recent years, but Lawrence makes these beasties into a formidable threat. He also ratchets the suspense level up into the red, making for a wonderfully squirmy experience.

As for Smith, he has to carry about 80 percent of the movie solo, and he’s utterly compelling. Whether he’s attempting to maintain his sense of bravado or glimpsing his complete and total despair, Smith nails the character brilliantly.

If there’s a flaw to “Legend,” it’s that it simplifies Matheson’s original story, removing an interesting dimension to the Neville character that might make audiences question his heroism. No telling if Lawrence, Smith or screenwriters Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman are to blame, but it’s exactly this kind of cowardly bowdlerization that makes so much of Hollywood’s current output feel safe, bland and test-audience-approved. A pox — but not a deadly zombie virus — upon the guilty party.