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Based on the novel by Richard Matheson, I Am Legend is a schizophrenic filmgoing experience. One minute it is an interesting character study on isolation, loneliness and desperation. The next it's a B-grade horror flick with lame-looking vampire-like "dark-seekers." Suddenly, it's a tense kick-in-the pants action thriller. The result is an oddly-paced but sometimes quite effective fable of redemption.

Will Smith stars as scientist Robert Neville in post-apocalyptic New York City circa 2012. Years before, the KV virus, originally billed as a cure for cancer, had quite a different result on the human population—it wiped out the majority of them or severely mutated others turning them into the aforementioned "dark-seekers." Only Neville, immune to the virus, was left unaffected—or so he thinks. Believing he is the last man on earth, Neville spends his days wandering the empty streets of New York searching for connection with anything resembling life as he used to know it: a visit to the video store, "chatting" with mannequins, and broadcasting a radio message every day holding out hope that someone will hear him. His only companion is his dog Sam whom he treats like one of his children ("Eat your vegetables' don't just push them around your plate," he lectures).

Prolonged periods of silence abound in the early going of this film, creating a sense of the vastness of Neville's lonely world. Only at night when the streets are filled with howling "dark-seekers" is the eerie silence broken.

His radio broadcast is finally answered by Anna (Alice Braga) who tells Neville of a handful of refugee camps outside the city—these cities of refuge house survivors within their walls. Neville refuses to go, citing his calling to find a "cure" for the virus and save humanity. Anna confronts him on a greater purpose, firmly believing that God had providentially led her to him. Neville stubbornly and bitterly refuses to acknowledge the divine: "there is no God!" Bitterness, fear, and lost faith plague him until the realization is made that he does hold the cure to the disease. Salvation, however, comes at a steep price and a truly selfless choice to lay one's life down for his friends.

I Am Legend is rich with spiritual imagery, whether it's a cross dangling from a rearview mirror, a sign in the midst of a destroyed city that reads "God Still Loves Us," or the presence of a church visible through the gates of one of the refugee cities. The idea of light repelling the darkness illustrates a spiritual battle that has been waged since the dawn of time.

True to the biblical story of redemption, I Am Legend also tells the tale of the curse that resides in and is transmitted through blood. Likewise, the cure is also in the blood—the blood of one-man sovereignly appointed by God to be the sacrificial offering. The death of one that will ultimately save the lives of many—a beautiful illustration that points to the True Legend.