First of all, let me start off by saying that this is one of the best books I have ever read. After 'Salem's Lot, I can honestly say it is my favorite vampire book. I bought it on Amazon after I watched the movie, and let me tell you, I did not realize how much of a travesty the movie was until I read this book. Now granted I could tell it was a terrible movie, but I didn't realize how badly it misrepresented the book. I highly recommend you buy this book, especially the version with other short stories by Matheson in the back. Matheson was well beyond his time as a writer, the Stephen King of his day. If you love vampires, or even just a good horror story, buy or check out this book YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED. And to think, younger generations are only going to think of the movie when you ask them about I Am Legend. Terrible.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!
The book centers around Robert Neville, who, unlike in the movie, was a perfectly ordinary working family man. The story chronicles Robert's day-by-day struggle to survive in a world overrun by the things that were once his friends and co-workers and which are now, once again unlike the movie, vampires. The movie never actually says they're vampires, it tries to modernize the plot too much and, nowadays, vampires can only be the sexy type like what you see in The Vampire Diaries (not that I don't enjoy that show, but it would be nice to see vampires treated as objects of horror again, which is one of the things I like about the 30 Days of Night franchise: the first movie and it's less-than-terrific sequel, and the comic books and novels. In fact, maybe the guy who directed 30 Days of Night shoulda done this movie, too.) So, to escape this, the movie just makes them photosensitive mutants. Which wouldn't necessarily be bad, but is kind of disappointing. That's one of the problems when you try to adapt a book from a different era to a modern point-of-view. Back in 1954 when this book was written, vampires could ONLY be monsters. Nowadays, they're basically humans with fangs. :-(
In the book, Robert fills his days with the chores of staying alive and fending off the constant attacks of the vampires at night. Everyday, he goes out into town to get the supplies he needs to survive, killing vampires as he finds them. The book really gives us an emotional view of Robert's predicament, his constant hope that he may one day find other people, his despair over his loneliness, the constant urge to end it all, and the guilt and remorse he feels as he realizes that some of the vampires he's putting down are not yet undead.
Robert reminisces about the past, and we learn that the cause of the virus was biological weapons used during a war. And that Robert's immunity was most likely caused by a bat bite he got while he was stationed in Panama in the Army. He recalls being forced to burn his daughter by martial law, as the government desperately tried to contain the outbreak. And how, unable to do the same to his wife, he buried her, only to have her come back seeking his blood.
Eventually, after gradually studying and educating himself using books pilfered from a library, Robert does find the virus responsible for the outbreak, but he never has time to find the cure because, one day while out scavenging supplies, he finds Ruth. Ruth appears to be a normal human woman as she is able to go out during the day. So he takes her home, and at first it seems like our hero may have found what he was looking for. So he shares with her what he learned about the virus. But, after she is exposed to a large amount of garlic, it is revealed she is infected. She then attacks Robert and escapes, but leaves him a note explaining that she was part of a community of people who had learned to live with the virus. They had developed a drug that worked by feeding the virus that was in their system while simultaneously keeping it from being able to reproduce itself, thus keeping it from spreading and turning the host into a vampire. However, because they still had the virus in their system, they were still really pale (Ruth was wearing makeup all over to appear healthily tan) and not able to go out for very long in the day, slipping into a virus-induced coma for most of it.
Ruth tells him that she was sent to spy him out and see how well supplied he was before the soldiers of the community came to take him to be tried and most likely executed, as it turns out that some of the people he was killing were actually the citizens of this community. She tells him that they hate him and that she did too, before she got to know him, because he killed her husband. Ruth tells him to flee, but Robert does not, because he has nowhere to really go.
That night, they attack, brutally slaughtering their way through the vampires and assaulting Robert's house. Robert fights back, but is overcome and injured, and then dragged to the jail in the new city to await his death. Ruth, who has grown to love him, cannot tolerate the idea of him being publicly executed as a spectacle, so she slips him some poison. As he listens to the people outside clamor for his death, Robert realizes that he has been thinking of himself as the only "normal" person left but, in reality, he was now the abnormal. These infected were the normal people now and, just as the people of his day had once told stories of vampires creeping through the night to steal away the life-blood of the living, so to would these new people tell stories of the man who would come unseen in the night to steal away their lives. So he takes the poison knowing that he would die and become a legend. To quote the book:
"...Full circle, he thought while the final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend."
Call me a jerk, but that just seems a better ending to me.
Check out what I mean,
try the book today
guaranteed good read!
guaranteed good read!
Ok, this movie is just bad. Awful, in fact. The only thing it has in common with the book is the title, the name of the character, the dog, and the fact that he had a wife and daughter. The plot was just terrible, it was just rushed along to the boring conclusion, and in no way even compared to the book as far as being able to relate to the character. The acting wasn't very good either. Not to mention those crappy CG effects. When I saw the fake lion at the beginning I knew I was about to be disappointed. And frankly, the way he lost his family was a bore. The book was better in this regard, too. Something about him holding out hope that they would get better only to have them slowly die and have to dispose of their bodies himself is just so much more heart-rending. And then having him ALREADY be a scientist? That was so lazy. They would have been better off having him NOT find the cure, and just survive until it was revealed that someone else did. They could have just made it to where some people had found a drug to prevent spread of the disease the way they did in the book, and then somehow Robert had to sacrifice himself for this new generation of vampire-human hybrids. Or maybe, they could have had a movie that was actually like the book. It would have been nice to see this story done with modern effects. Could have been something like 30 Days of Night. Anything would have been better than the ending it did have.
And what the hell were those monsters supposed to be?
They aren't zombies, they aren't vampires, I guess they're just mutants. I hate that it's not clearly defined what they are, I mean, they burn in the sun like vampires, but they don't want blood. Its kind of like the Rage virus in 28 Days Later, but that was actually a GOOD movie. Maybe they should've done this movie more like that one. This movie made me want a refund of my time. It had a few scenes that were almost jump-worthy, but other than that it was just a complete, tired bore until the dumb woman exposes them and then he dies to protect the cure and they leave us with a disappointing ending that just shows her finding the city of the...un-mutated? And that's it, it just ends. Really? It's just disappointing. Sigh. The old movie with Charlton Heston was better. At least it followed the source material more and didn't rely on crappy special effects to move it along. Honestly, the dog was the best part of this movie. And the end of the book made more sense, too. He was a legend because his story would be told with breathless horror throughout the generations, in the movie you couldn't really say he would be a legend, just a hero maybe. So the title doesn't even make sense. They should have just named this something else, as it had nothing to do with the actual story.
buy it cheap on Amazon.
