Last night was the early screening of I Am Legend and if you were one of the winners of SPACE's giveaway - congratulations!

As someone who went with a group who didn't read the book, I Am Legend was a riot to watch... at first.

We didn't know what to expect and neither did the people who read the book. Everyone was so absorbed in the presentation. The lack of dialogue gave us time to spot details, like the Superman-Batman poster on a wall. There also were subtle messages behind each of the characters' facial expressions - such as the doctor's, when she says she cured cancer. But what truly drew us into the movie was the lingering fear that something terrible was about to happen. That fear hit a fevered pitch when Sam, Robert Neville's German Shepherd, ran into a dark tunnel.

After a year filled with loud action-packed summertime movies, the stark contrasts between noise and silence in I Am Legend is a breath of fresh air. It also helps that Will Smith is at the top of his game. He nailed the part of Neville, a simple man who is struggling against the monotonous, yet frightening life presented before him.

The viewer completely relates to every moment of Neville's despair, pain and insanity. The moments of madness aren't laughable, either. Smith carries his role with an intensity that's freakin' it. When Neville is in a room filled with mannequins, the scene is shot in such a way to suggest that they might move at any moment. The uncertainty of whether they are really alive had the audience hanging by a thread. The blend of anticipation and suspense then climaxes when one of Neville's traps is used against him, leaving him hanging from a rope.

Soon after that, Hollywood takes over and the movie degrades into a garden variety horror flick. Neville breaks out to get bumrushed, plot holes begin to unravel, and next thing we know some woman is stealing his bacon. He was saving that bacon, dammit.

The movie quickly propels itself into a definite ending - something unheard of in today's "trilogy or to be continued" book adaptation trend. We continued to watch, hoping that somewhere in this anti-climactic mess, they were saving a good ending. They weren't, dammit.