Movie Reviews - I am Omega

I have been on an Apocalyptic movie kick the last few weeks, watching several that I have been wanting to see for a while now. I've already reviewed two, The Book of Eli and The Road, and I will probably have some more in the weeks ahead. In fact here's one now...

Over the years writer Richard Matheson's classic vampire horror novel I am Legend has been made into a few movies. Most notably the version starring Will Smith from 2007 and the 1970's cheese classic The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston. There was also the low budget 1960's Vincent Price version, The Last Man on Earth, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were others too. All of these different versions make some sense as the basic Matheson story, lone human survivor battling an army of vampires intent on killing him is a good formula for a "watchable" movie. The most recent one that I have seen is I am Omega (also 2007) starring martial artist/actor Mark Dacascos. Although Matheson is uncredited this one is obviously another take, or should I say rip-off of his story. Dacascos stars in this version as the last human on Earth, well not the very last, there is that special forces guy (Geoff Meed) and of course a beautiful woman (Jennifer Lee Wiggins) that somehow has acquired the cure for the plague. I wasn't expecting much from this little production, certainly not Shakespeare, or even much of Matheson for that matter. What I was expecting though was a non-stop action roller coaster ride with Dacascos Karate chopping his way thru a legion of undead monsters from beginning to end. We don't even get that. What we get is Dacascos running down the same empty Los Angeles alley shooting the same couple of FX make-up vampires over and over again. Take a look at the image above, it's from the DVD cover and you won't see anything even close in the movie. I used it because I couldn't get any kind of decent screen capture for this film, there is nothing to capture, I just described 90% of the movie. Guy running down alley with a machine gun shooting at vampires. At least he uses short bursts. There is nothing to see here, no army of the undead, just the same few rubber-faced vampire goons with their heads exploding from different angles. No great martial arts action, although Dacascos does go nunchucks on them for a minute or two. No great pathos, like Heston mooning over a statue of Caesar, just Dacascos and his two emotions, sad and angry. There is nothing to see here, just move on and save your money. Or better yet watch any of the previously mentioned versions, any one of them is better than this. I'm glad this didn't cost me much or I would be getting sad and angry myself right about now...