Anyway, we turned up at the main cinema in Birmingham just after three on Saturday afternoon. There was a somewhat limited choice for movies showing that afternoon; Alien v Predator (or was it Predator v Alien?), Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Will Smith film, I Am Legend.

Now I had no idea what the Predator-Alien thing was about, but I knew I didn’t want to see it because it was an 18. Alvin and the Chipmunks could have been quite cute, but I couldn’t see my boyfriend agreeing to it and anyway, I’m wary of going to see kids films after an unpleasant experience I once had when I accidentally ended up going to see Garfield instead of Spiderman 2. If anyone hasn’t seen Garfield, please don’t put yourself through it. The cat doesn’t even look like Garfield, and don’t get me started on the dog who played Odie.

So, we opted for I Am Legend. I was sure that persons unspecified had told me it was a really good film, and from what I knew about it (that it was an apocalyptic, last man on earth type scenario) I thought it was the sort of film I might like. I was envisaging something along the lines of the Day After Tomorrow, which I really enjoyed despite the somewhat weak love story. I was in for a shock

I did theoretically know that, if Will Smith was the only man left on earth, this would be a film with a distinct lack of dialogue. I don’t think anything prepared me, however, for just how boring the first hour or so would be. The scenario is that a viral cure for cancer has gone horribly wrong, killing off the majority of the world population. Will Smith plays a scientist who is living alone in a deserted New York City and, it soon emerges, trying to work on a cure. Unfortunately not everyone on earth has been killed, and there remains a dangerous population of zombies who have been infected by the virus but not yet killed, and who roam the city in the dark trying to kill anything which crosses their path.

The film starts with very atmospheric shots of Will Smith wandering around the city etc, which to be fair are very well done and impressive, but my mind did soon start to wander when the most profound dialogue which was ongoing was with his dog. It was a rather sweet dog actually, although I’m not normally a big fan of Alsatians, but all the same, it didn’t say a lot. I was starting to wonder how much longer Tim would manage to stay awake for, when the first of the zombies appeared.

Eeeek! :cry: The film began to take a turn for the worst! It was scary; seriously scary. We’d been to the cinema to see a similar type of film (Invasion) a few months ago, which also featured people infected with something or other behaving like aggressive zombies, but this was a million times more terrifying. When various things happened it was hard to stop myself from screaming out loud. Once or twice I know I did let out a few stifled yelping noises but hopefully not so loudly that the rest of the cinema heard. As far as I could tell from my position clinging on to my boyfriend for dear life, I seemed to be the only person in the cinema thus affected, but as far as I’m concerned it was the most disturbing film I’ve seen since the bit in Bambi where his mother gets shot and I definitely don’t want to see it again!

I don’t think, in all honesty, that it should have been a 15, because it was very violent and I can’t imagine how much more violent it would have to be to qualify as an 18! I felt kinda nervous walking down my road on the way home in the dark afterwards, and I woke up in the middle of last night thinking I’d heard a sound in my room, then couldn’t get back to sleep in case a zombie came to get me. Well, I knew no monster could get me if I kept my arms under the bedclothes, held onto the sheet and didn’t drop Duck (seriously, that’s a rule of monsters) but it was kinda hot under the bedclothes and I would ordinarily have had half of me over the cover, so it took a long time to drop back off.

I can tell you something for nothing anyway; if I ever have the misfortune to be the last person left on the planet, I am most definitely going to kill myself. There is no way I would have the nerve to go wandering around the streets with a gun, even assuming I’d be able to work out which way up to hold one, never knowing what was lurking round corners. I’d have to keep myself shut up in a cellar with my back permanently to the wall, and in the film even that doesn’t keep Will Smith safe, so it seems like rather a lost cause.

As for the film, I’d recommend it to anyone who fancies Will Smith, assuming such a subcategory of humanity might exist. I was reading up on it on the internet on Saturday night and apparently the film is based on a book, the ending of which has been sanitised by Hollywood, so I would be quite interested to get a copy of that at some point and see what replaces the happy ending. In the meantime, next week we’re going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks