The Omega Man

Beyond the great liberties the film took with its literary source, the least convincing aspect of this second cinematic adaptation of the classic novel “I Am Legend” (1954) is the strong impression that author Richard Matheson’s lessons weren’t really understood.

Essentially, while the film is focusing on the not very noble aspects of the collapsed society, its tirades against the old system remain cogent and to the point, but when the story shifts to the gang of new despots, they’re depicted in such a degrading way, characterized by crazed obscurantism, that it makes one nostalgic for the corruption and mistaken notions inherent in capitalism.

This is the point where the message short-circuits, with Matthias’s macabre fraternity clearly nothing more than a sect of crazy fundamentalists (“We mean to cancel the world you civilized people made“) that deserve to be restrained at the very least. Consequently, as events unfold, not only do they tend to fall into a misplaced Manichaeism – Neville’s jumping into a military jeep to go do battle with a pack of child killers is almost justified – but all the irony of the literary source is lost. For example, the book employs a splendid role reversal at the end, one that conveys equal dignity for the new race born of infection.

On the figurative level, the film, beefed up with a decent budget, still falls short: the scenes in a desolate slum, the nighttime ambushes, and the vivid depiction of individuals in the third stage of infection – resembling albino monks with scarred faces – turn out to be evocative stand-alone elements, but they inevitably take a back seat in the context of sociopolitical critique in a film such as this.

Of the three sci-fi movies the legendary Charlton Heston made in a fruitful five-year period, “The Omega Man” is unquestionably the weakest. After all, if your competition is a pair of benchmarks such as “Planet of Apes” (1968) and “Soylent Green” (1973), you definitely run the risk of looking like the ugly duckling by comparison.