As many of you will know, mankind is currently on the verge of making important advances in biotechnology that could allow the artificial synthesis of live viruses and bacteria. ‘I am Legend’ attempts to throw a general feeling of caution and fear regarding the potential consequences of such technology.

The eerie story is set in the very near future, where US Army virologist Robert Neville (Will Smith) roams the streets of an empty New York City, with his dog Sam (Samantha), searching for food. There are deer roaming the streets and even a lion. There is something creepy going on, and the story line unfolds itself only very slowly through a series of flashbacks.

In 2008 a technology was created which modified viruses to allow the full cure of cancer. Soon, a deadly virus known in the film as the ‘KV virus’, which accidentally emerged as a human reengineered version of the measles virus, is unleashed upon the world. The result was that within two years 90% of the human population died. Out of the survivors, 9% were infected but did not die. These degenerated into a fiendish aggressive form of life, who cannot tolerate light (kind of like vampires). About 1% of humanity were fortunate enough to be totally immune to the virus, but the vast majority of these were killed by the infected humans.

Robert Neville knows of no other healthy survivors other than himself. As far as he knows, he’s the last healthy human left on the planet. Despite this, he continues relentlessly to attempt to find a cure so that the infected could be cured and brought back to a normal human state. He roams around in the day, and hides at night. Every day, he sends out a radio broadcast on a large number of frequencies for any survivors to meet him. After doing this for a couple of years, eventually two other normal human survivors emerge. A young boy names Ethan (Charlie Tahan) and his mother Anna (Alice Braga). They traveled to find him after listening to one of his broadcastes. They are planning on going to a survivor’s colony, which they believe exists in the mountains somewhere, revealed to them by God.

Neville thinks the idea of a survivor colony in the mountains is absurd, as is the idea of God existing (he couldn’t bring himself to believe in God after the way humans had been wiped out by the virus). Instead he takes them to Neville’s home. Unfortunately the violent infected humans find out where they are hiding and prepare a massive night attack.

It is just at this moment that it appears that one of Neville’s attempted cures for the infection works. But it is too late! There is no way that he could survive with at least a hundred of the infected attacking his house. He decides to give a sample of the cure to Anna and Ethan, hide them in a bomb-resistant compartment of his basement laboratory, and take his own life by exploding a powerful grenade, simultaneously taking out the mob of infected who were about to kill and eat him, thus leaving Anna and Ethan free to search for a survivor colony and save what was left of humanity.

Despite the deep storyline, not much actually happens in I am Legend. There are extremely few human characters, and the entire film belongs to Will Smith alone. He does a good job of portraying the character, and creating the spooky, serious aura that is needed in the film. But his acting isn’t enough to compensate for the overall lack of events in the film, which detracts significantly from the entertainment value. I am Legend has a good starting point in its storyline, and manages to create the right aura and atmosphere, but doesn’t fill enough details to make an outstanding film. It does, on the other hand, succeed in delivering a sense of caution with regards to the consequences of the next generation of bio-engineering, lest we humans end up creating something which is totally out of our control.