Going into this movie I was expecting more frights. While there was plenty of action, there wasn’t enough suspense to push this move out of the Action genre into Horror. That said, I found this movie to be less about the conflict between Big Will & the zombies, as it was against himself, his loneliness & the circumstances forced upon him.
The premise is a haunting one; to be the last man on Manhattan island, trapped with violent mutated people & believing yourself to be the last survivor anywhere. He copes with this by setting up a strict routine of activities. Needed things such as hunting & gathering food, as well as the small things like renting dvd’s & golfing, to help keep his sanity. By night he locks himself down in his house while the streets run wild, performing tests on rats & captured mutants to find a cure for the affliction.
It is interesting that our hero discounts the mutants as having no trace of humanity left, when they are obviously still quite intelligent. They are more akin to a pack of wild animals than say your typical movie zombie. The mutant leader certainly had the presence of mind to set up the trap, effectively catching his enemy and almost finishing him off!
One complaint I have is the CGI… I can see it being used for the wild animals, but people in make up would have been much more effective for the mutants.
That aside, this was a highly entertaining film that is a fine compliment to Vincent Price’s original, The Last Man on Earth.
