As this got underway, I found myself of course wondering if I hadn’t already seen it earlier in the day in the form of Outlaw. The set-up is similar, and of course, there’s Danny Dyer.

Actually, I ultimately found it quite a neat blending of something like Outlaw and, with the presence of Gillian Anderson, what I missed in Outlaw that The Brave One had to offer. I was surprised to find I liked Danny Dyer in Outlaw, and the same was true here; I love Gillian Anderson, of course; and despite the very clearcut masculine-feminine thing here (the women quite literally leave the movie for “somewhere safe” before horrible manly things happen), I found it much better than the reviews I’ve read. Clocking in at little over 70 minutes, it’s easily worth that just for Anderson’s performance, but there’s plenty more to get into too.

I can only apologise, but again I have to say Kermode pretty much nailed this one in his review. I really didn’t expect this, from what I’d seen and heard, to be a monster movie – the moment he mentioned this aspect of the movie in his review, my interest in the whole thing all but disappeared. It seems so entirely pointless, not only following the obvious 28 Days Later … that he mentioned, but also following unrelated projects like Vanilla Sky and Devil’s Advocate which gave us those frightening vistas of a deserted American city; slightly more related flicks like the recent 30 Days of Night (incidentally, one thing I’d say Kermode and others have got wrong is that if you’re gonna say ‘it’s pretty much a zombie movie even though they’re not zombies’ a la 28 days later … then you may as well count in their aversion to sunlight and fangs too and say it’s actually more like a vampire movie, hence my 30 Days comparison); and End of Days, which at the time of its release seemed to be some kind of consolation for how badly this very project (which was once to be directed by Ridley Scott – why did you do American Gangster instead of this Ridley?!? – and starring, ahem, Arnold Schwartzenegger … no comment …) was going.

For what it is, I can’t deny it has its moments and Will Smith is at his very best, being as he is the only person onscreen for much of the movie. But this is one case where the 90 minute blessing does not apply in the slightest. This movie needed to be longer, it needed to go further. Yet at the same time, I can’t help but remember the long stretches of Smith just wandering around shouting “Anna!” and just how many times did he have to tell her “everyone … is … dead!”? Enough for his voice to metamorphose into Norman Lovett’s in my head, that’s for sure. Even the visual effects – on the creatures side of things, at least – are a disappointment here. Double bill 28 Days Later and iRobot and read the book if you must instead.