No unblinking model of action-film courage, he is terrified, lonely, and racked with guilt over his inability to save the lives of … well, anyone – a guilt he tries to assuage by working on a vaccine for the vaccine that will save humanity, not to mention his own soul. And secondly, Smith’s Neville (who appears onscreen alone, or with his dog, throughout most of the movie) is a hero with real psychological potential. Devoid of human activity, the city, with its giant decaying billboards and skyscrapers, looks like the desperate cry of a species lashing out at inevitable extinction. First of all, Lawrence’s desolate Manhattan is a wonder to behold. All this happens during the film’s first 10 minutes, so initially I was optimistic.

By day he wanders the city’s empty avenues with his German shepherd, Sam, scavenging for food and gasoline and borrowing every title at his local movie-rental house in alphabetical order by night he barricades himself in his apartment with his rifle to watch DVDs and wait for the living dead to break down the door. In this latest adaptation of Richard Matheson's apocalyptic science-fiction novel of 1954 (which has been previously adapted at least a couple of times as The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price and The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston), Smith plays Robert Neville, a military immunologist who is the only real human left in New York.

The Krippen Virus has killed 5.5 billion people, leaving the few unlucky souls who have an immunity alone with 500 million mutated, gray-skinned, rabid cannibals who come out at night to feast on the blood of the living and screech at great volumes. Krippen (a brilliant, uncredited Emma Thompson), is informing the public that they can now feel free to smoke filterless cigarettes and lie out in the sun the next, Manhattan is an overgrown wasteland where thousands of rusting, driverless cars fill the streets, and herds of lions roam through Central Park like it’s the African savanna. In a bit of black irony any cynic would have to appreciate, the virus that decimates the world’s population in I Am Legend is the result of an unforeseen reaction to a miraculous new cancer vaccine.

I am legend monsters in group