2000s SF film

[peteryoung]

I Am Omega, 2007, USA   DIRECTED BY GRIFF FURST
Strictly speaking this is I Am Legend's third film adaptation, being released direct to DVD a month before the Will Smith film. Although neither Richard Matheson nor the book are credited it was intended as a deliberate cash-in on that big budget movie, a tactic that film distributor Asylum have always drawn criticism for, previously with movies that had aped the ideas behind Snakes on a Plane, Transformers and The Da Vinci Code. As low-budget rip-offs go this isn't entirely bad although it proceeds along very predictable lines, the acting is mostly mediocre (lead actor Mark Dacascos has worked on better films including The Crow and The Island of Doctor Moreau) and the screenplay is by Geoff Meed, who also acts competently enough. But there are also a few scenes that surprised me with some rather artistically done cinematography, although everything keeps returning to short fight scenes in which Dacascos uses his martial arts against the same old horde of mutant cannibal zombies in downtown Los Angeles. If everyone concerned had taken this film a bit more seriously – even with the self-imposed constraint of getting it in the can and released before the end of 2007 – this might have been a cut above the usual B-movie, but a classic of the zombie genre it certainly ain't and of the four I Am Legend films it's by far the weakest.