I Am Legend is the third adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name, which has been credited sometimes as the inspiration of modern-day zombie movies. This particular version has been in development for 10 years now with Ridley Scott originally offered to direct Arnold Schwarzenegger in it and with Michael Bay, Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas also having been linked with the project. Years on, with Scott now a ever-present Oscar favourite, and Schwarzenegger having swapped action heroics for a politician’s suit and a governor’s office, we finally get a film directed by Francis Lawrence (Constantine) and starring Will Smith, which deals with the intriguing aspects of a fantasy everyone has probably entertained at one time or another – being the last man on Earth.

Smith plays military scientist Dr Robert Neville; we see him drive through a 2013 Manhattan that seems like the loneliest place on the planet. There are no people, grass and trees protrude from the pavements and streets, ghostly cars have piled up on collapsed bridges, a herd of wild deer roams around Times Square; Mother Nature slowly reclaiming one proud zenith of human civilisation. During the day Neville navigates through the eerie cityscape looking for food and supplies and at night he barricades himself in a house whose doors and window he seals with iron shutters. The nights are dominated by snarling hairless zombies who have becomes such via a man-produced virus. Said virus had mutated from a cure for cancer and decimated all but one per cent of the planet’s human population, those who have natural immunity to it. Apart from looking for supplies, Dr Neville’s daily tasks include trapping the occasional zombie and carrying it back to his house. There he has a laboratory where he is desperately seeking a cure or a vaccine against the virus.

Much like 2001’s Cast Away, the film relies on a single actor to carry it through, and Will Smith does an admirable job, which is just about the film’s most impressive feature. For two thirds of its run time Smith is the only human presence in the frame, where he is surrounded by impressive sets and even more impressive computer-generated effects, which for once augment the human element rather than upstage it. Ironically, the first two acts of the film featuring a continuous performance by Smith are more absorbing and palpably superior to the fast-paced third act where the film mutates into a pretty generic action adventure. Smith, like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, delivers an engaging performance as a man who is pushed toward madness by the lack of human interaction.

With an SUV, a rifle and a German shepherd to talk to rather than a volleyball, Smith’s Dr Neville has the better deal than Hanks’ character in Cast Away, but his performance is the most impressive thing in I Am Legend nonetheless. His attempts to preserve his sanity are almost embarrassingly heartbreaking: he watches DVDs of old news shows, he talks to his dog, he engineers a date with a mannequin in a department store he has dressed with clothes himself. As he tries his versions of a cure on the captured zombies, we sense that as he tries to bring one back to humanity because he wants to save mankind, his immediate motivation is the fact that he does not want to be alone any more.