I Am Legend

Village Voice Scott Foundas

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.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

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.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

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.

New York Post Kyle Smith

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

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.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

As Tom Hanks did in "Cast Away," Will Smith pulls off this half-insane role perfectly.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

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.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

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.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

For horror fans, Halloween came a little later than usual this year, but it was worth the wait.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

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.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

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.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Slick, adrenaline-fueled fun.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Instead of maintaining its edgy sense of constant discomfort, the movie is compelled to make Neville as fuzzily adorable and messianic as possible.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

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.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

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.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

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.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Matheson's bitterly ironic ending -- which pivots on the nature of Neville's legend -- is gutted and turned into formulaic pap.

USA Today Claudia Puig

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

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.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

After its promising opening, I Am Legend devolves into a generic zombie slaughterfest.

Slate Dana Stevens

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.

Film Threat Michael Ferraro

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.

Time Richard Corliss

The word "mixed" isn't mixed enough to fit my response to this film.

Newsweek David Ansen

I Am Legend can't seem to make up its mind just what kind of movie it wants to be.

Empire Dan Jolin

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…

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

I Am Legend has one undeniably cool thing about it, namely the vision of Manhattan as a semi-feral wasteland.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

If you want lots of Will Smith and industrial-strength special effects, the movie delivers.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The credits list a couple of dozen medical and scientific consultants. What this film really needed was a script doctor.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

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.

Premiere Eric Alt

Overall, I Am Legend is a wasted opportunity -- a rickety, weather-beaten framework around an otherwise strong central performance from Smith.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

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.