I Am Legend
Metascore
65 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 37 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 37
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 37
  3. Negative: 2 out of 37
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  1. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    90
    In what has been a pretty remarkable career up to now, it's this performance that fully affirms Smith as one of the great leading men of his generation.
  2. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    88
    The Manhattan movie of the year, Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend, offers a stunning glimpse into how the city - as we know it today - might look in 2012 if it were abandoned in 2009.
  3. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    80
    The first two thirds and change of I Am Legend is terrific mindless fun: crackerjack action with gnashing vampires barely glimpsed (and scarier for that) and how’d-they-do-that New York locations that retroactively justify the traffic jams.
  4. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    75
    Trouble enters only when the script overcomplicates things in the end. Until then, especially in a growling dogfight, director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) keeps you squirming.
  5. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    If it is true that mankind has 100 years to live before we destroy our planet, it provides an enlightening vision of how Manhattan will look when it lives on without us. The movie works well while it's running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds.
  6. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    75
    Smith carries it, even after the story loses its nerve. This film is the opposite of “Transformers”: It’s all about the unsettling silence, not the noise.
  7. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    For horror fans, Halloween came a little later than usual this year, but it was worth the wait.
  8. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    75
    A scary, inventive, exciting and breathless adventure that combines the best elements of “Children of Men," “Escape from New York" and “The Road Warrior," but leaves out the worst stuff - such as the story-clogging despair and political allegory in “Children," a movie that made apocalypse look like kind of a downer.
  9. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    75
    It's neither a neat little allegory about faith nor a transcendently entertaining one. I Am Legend is actually about the last man on earth played by one of the last real movie stars on earth. To be honest, Smith was all I was thinking about while I sat through I Am Legend.
  10. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    75
    As Tom Hanks did in "Cast Away," Will Smith pulls off this half-insane role perfectly.
  11. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    75
    The first two-thirds are classic science fiction, technologically plausible and emotionally resonant. It's only when God enters the picture that things slide downhill.
  12. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    75
    In spirit, I Am Legend is caught in some abstractly doom-laden sci-fi past. For what it is, though, the film is well-done, a case of suspenseful competence trumping questionable relevance.
  13. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    75
    The movie year's most expensive and ambitious sci-fi spectacular, I Am Legend, is three movies in one: a futuristic effects-o-rama, a zombie thriller and a survivalist parable. Each is better than average, and the experience is fairly gripping.
  14. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Tasha Robinson
    75
    While I Am Legend is reasonably absorbing, it can be difficult to focus on the film that actually made it to the screen, instead of the many versions that didn't.
  15. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    70
    Smith, sporting a newly buffed physique, delivers an extraordinary performance as a man slowly coming unglued under the strain of no human contact and a constantly alternating role of hunter and prey.
  16. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    70
    I Am Legend is a blockbuster like no other, one that finds its grandness in modesty. It's a star vehicle with a star who knows his place in the universe.
  17. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Carina Chocano
    70
    Slick, adrenaline-fueled fun.
  18. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    70
    There is something graceful and effortless about this performance (Mr. Smith's), which not only shows what it might feel like to be the last man on earth, but also demonstrates what it is to be a movie star.
  19. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    70
    Remarkably eerie yet annoyingly larded with cheap horror-film shock effects, I Am Legend stands as an effective but also irksome adaptation of Richard Matheson's classic 1954 sci-fi novel.
  20. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    70
    Instead of maintaining its edgy sense of constant discomfort, the movie is compelled to make Neville as fuzzily adorable and messianic as possible.
  21. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    70
    The popcorn elements are well handled, but what lingers is the sense of urban despair: watching old videotapes of the Today show, carrying on friendships with mannequins, Smith turns out to be no legend at all, just another New Yorker slowly dying of loneliness.
  22. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    67
    Smith, it should be noted, has compared Neville in interviews to Job. Tone down the highfalutin references. In the end, this is a sci-fi zombie movie, folks.
  23. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    63
    I Am Legend is essentially "28 Days Later" . . ., or "28 Weeks Later" . . ., only with millions more for special effects, and with nothing approaching the heart-pounding, bloodcurdling power and smarts of the two British-made yarns.
  24. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    63
    Matheson's bitterly ironic ending -- which pivots on the nature of Neville's legend -- is gutted and turned into formulaic pap.
  25. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    63
    A little more than halfway in, Legend, based on the book by Richard Matheson (which also spawned 1971's Omega Man and 1964's TheLast Man on Earth), deteriorates into a schlocky zombie horror flick and loses its steam.
  26. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    63
    After its promising opening, I Am Legend devolves into a generic zombie slaughterfest.
  27. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Michael Ferraro
    60
    Instead of being the science fiction masterpiece Matheson fans have been salivating for since the 80s (when Schwarzenegger was once attached), it’s just another average Hollywood popcorn flick.
  28. Empire
    Reviewed by: Dan Jolin
    60
    While the sun shines, it’s a four-star thriller with a superb turn from Smith. When the moon rises, it’s a two-star horror cartoon with some of the worst FX we’ve seen all year. So, really, it has to average out at…
  29. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    60
    I Am Legend can't seem to make up its mind just what kind of movie it wants to be.
  30. Slate
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    60
    A big part of the reason for this movie's nose dive around the one-hour mark is that, seen up close, the Infected just aren't that scary.
  31. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    60
    The word "mixed" isn't mixed enough to fit my response to this film.
  32. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    58
    I Am Legend has one undeniably cool thing about it, namely the vision of Manhattan as a semi-feral wasteland.
  33. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Walter Addiego
    50
    If you want lots of Will Smith and industrial-strength special effects, the movie delivers.
  34. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    50
    The credits list a couple of dozen medical and scientific consultants. What this film really needed was a script doctor.
  35. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    50
    The star, as solo practitioner, does a terrific job of holding our attention when we're not taking in surreal vistas of a deserted Manhattan that are fascinating in their own right. Still, zombies are zombies, and this nasty lot, mostly digital creations of variable quality, keep draining the distinction that the movie seeks and occasionally finds.
  36. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Eric Alt
    38
    Overall, I Am Legend is a wasted opportunity -- a rickety, weather-beaten framework around an otherwise strong central performance from Smith.
  37. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Josh Rosenblatt
    30
    Unfortunately, after those first 10 minutes it’s all downhill for I Am Legend, as the film descends into a monster-movie malaise starring a horde of balding CGI monsters that look like refugees from a video game and that will scare absolutely no one, save those who worry that green-screening is ruining the movies.

User Reviews

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User Score
7.0 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 454 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 162 out of 244
  2. Mixed: 36 out of 244
  3. Negative: 46 out of 244
  1. SeanF
    10
    An interesting updating of the original novel. Will Smith shows that he can actually act. Sometimes when I make that statement people give a quizickle look, but, remember that most of the film is Smith acting on his own with a dog, and he holds the audiences interest. One of the few films that brings a tear to my eye during one certain scene. However, what the hell is up with the new ending? It sucks,and also makes the film title itself nonsensical.… Full Review »
  2. grandpajoe6191
    5
    "I Am Legend", a horror movie starring Will Smith, could have become a better movie with the idea it pertains. However, all I saw was a monotonous movie where Will Smith was running away from infected zombie-like creatures with a unexplained horrific ending.… Full Review »
  3. SirEddieCook
    1
    Will Smith is an especially popular actor who makes particularly bad movies. He is usually serviceable in his performance, but never any good. This film is a remake of the far more enigmatic and entertaining B-movie from the 1970s, Will Smith walks around abandoned Manhattan and tries to survive against heavily CGI vampires. There is no villain. There are no great action sequences. There aren't any great lines. It's actually boring. The only part of the movie that was somewhere good was the opening sequence where the US Military has to shoot down the Brooklyn Bridge to quarantine Manhattan because the plague is starting. But that part had nothing to do with the rest of the movie.… Full Review »
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