Happily, I Am Legend is more than a great trailer. If you like horror movies whose chief aim is to fill you with dread (rather than simply populating the screen with high body counts and/or extreme gore) I Am Legend is one for you to sink into with the lights off and the biggest screen possible in front of you. Like in 28 Days Later, the infected are swift and brutal. They live in hives, in darkness, unable to survive for longer than a moment under the sun's rays and yes, they're plenty scary but the dread of them might just be as bad as the infected themselves.
Will Smith rules NY by day but the nights are long and howling and even the daylight hours are tinged with loneliness and fear of shadows. One of the coolest things about I Am Legend is that Will Smith plays Robert Neville not strictly as an action hero but as a living, breathing human being forced to deal with the aftermath of a cure for cancer gone horribly wrong. If you saw The Pursuit of Happiness you won't be surprised by how good he is here as a man backed into a different kind of corner. My heart was racing the entire time but I couldn't take my eyes off him.
