How it Ends

I Am Legend
Bio-Zombie
DVD
M'House
March 2008

The post title comes from DeVotchKa, and their new album is really quite good. I hope we get the acrobats at the 930 Club show in May. I was going to do a ZOM-BEE MOV-EE post with these two movies after I watched Automaton Transfusion (which I have to give props for having a title that could not possibly appeal to anyone--and yet I rented it--UPDATE: watched five minutes and shut it off, it's that bad.), but both of these got me thinking about the importance of endings and how they really can make or break a movie.

Which is a good mindset to be in for watching No Country for Old Men again tonight.

I'll start with Bio-Zombie. It's a Japanese zombies-in-a-mall flick that offers subtitles in both English and something called Engrish. Or you can watch it with everybody dubbed as surfer-dudes. We started with Engrish, switched over to English and then at some point I fell asleep for a good fifteen minutes, so for me it ended up like it had a missing reel like in Planet Terror, because there was no way Jamee was gonna rewind.

Basically, it's an OK movie. Nothing special and "Zombies in a Japanese Mall" pretty much tells you everything you need to know. But the last scene really works and with it I went from thinking, "hey, this is allright" to "hey, this is all right." And since even my Japanophile friend Maria hasn't heard of it, I'm going to assume most everyone reading this has not seen it and I'll stop talking about the ending right now. But if you're into zombie flicks check it out. It's all right.

And then we watched I Am Legend.

Sometimes when you're watching a movie you can tell from the beginning that a particular character is doomed. I am Legend is one of these, and I'm not going to say who it is, though it's pretty obvious from the get-go. It's not Emma Thompson, though you can assume she buys it sometime between the first two scenes. So, anyway, I thought I am Legend was pretty darn good up until the aforementioned character dies. For a big-budget, PG-13 rated Will Smith movie, it's pretty intense and much grimmer that I expected, especially in the aforementioned death scene.

("Aforementioned" is the word of the day.)

Then the flick goes a little downhill. Maybe more than a little. The Shrek bit didn't really work for me the way it should have, because I already got the point that Neville was at the snapping point from being alone during the scene where he nearly breaks down in the video store.

But then we get to the end. Or, more specifically, then we get to the end of the theatrical cut. The last two minutes of this version of the film ruins everything good that came before it. Seriously, it's that bad. What happens is this (SPOILER TIME) - Neville blows himself up real good and we're left with an annoying character who shows up two-thirds of the way through the film who suddenly has a deeply stupid voice-over where they awkwardly try to explain the title. OK. There. Now you don't need to see the theatrical cut.

We immediately went online and tracked down the original ending. It works and it fits with the rest of the film. It's not necessarily a happy ending, but it offers hope, which in light of the preceding 100 minutes is a minor victory, but a victory nonetheless. If anything, it ends like the novella The Mist and is ambiguous and open without any real resolution. Which is probably exactly why they dropped it-- 'Cuz 'Mericans is stupid.

So, if you haven't seen I Am Legend yet, rent the bonus features disc and watch that version. It's not perfect, but there are worse ways to waste an hour-and-a-half (and it's called 30 Days of Night).