"I Am Legend"

"I Am Legend" is the third attempt by filmmakers to translate Richard Matheson's 50-year-old novel of apocalyptic terror. In 1964, Italian film director Ubaldo Ragona pitted Vincent Price against a hoard of bacteriainfected vampires in "The Last Man on Earth." In 1971, Hollywood released "The Omega Man" with Charlton Heston. In the midst of Cold War hysteria, the disease was replaced by biological fallout. The vampires turned into Goth, black-robed cultish figures who shunned the daylight. Heston's character, a military scientist who'd managed to perfect a cure just after the nick of time, was immune to the disease.

Will Smith plays the military scientist, Robert Neville, who's likewise immune, this time to a runaway virus that mutates from a potential cancer cure. One can't help but feel all that pesky stemcell paranoia at play, although that's about all the controversy the film chooses to muster.

Once again the virus has caused acute vampirism, and for much of the film Neville fears he's the last human alive.

He spends much of his time in an underground laboratory, trying to perfect a serum to turn these creatures back into humans. At night he locks himself and his dog behind iron shutters and listens to the blood-seekers howling in the streets outside.

By the way, it's not easy to top a Will Smith performance, but a 3-year-old German shepherd, a ragged-eared kennel survivor named Abby, manages to do so. Seems that Abby just might be the last pooch on Earth, too.

Computergenerated animation has come a long way since 1971; in particular, the film's rendition of Manhattan, after three years of neglect, is nothing short of astounding. Smith and Abby do a decent job surviving, but the film's biggest drawback will have sci-fi fans feeling they've been in this pickle before.

Despite a nice sanitybending performance by Smith, I left the theater with an overwhelming sense of redundancy.

Both "28 Days Later" and "Resident Evil" have covered the same ground, and vampires (or their kissing cousins, the living dead) have proliferated over the last decade.

"Van Helsing," "Blade" and "30 Days of Night" have made similar statements. (Genre fans might also remember the fang-free "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" and the trippy "The Quiet Earth.")

But few films of late have the gravitas to portray these blood-seeking night stalkers as groundbreaking, even in terms of sheer twitch factor. "I Am Legend" tries hard, with first-rate visual acuity, but don't expect uncharted terrain.