There seems to be no end in sight for the COVID-19 coronavirus that has wreaked havoc across the world with just shy of 1 million global cases and over 50,000 deaths. Governments are locking down their countries and enforcing strict social distancing and extensive travel bans in an attempt to flatten the curve and reduce the overload of hospitals struggling to accommodate overwhelming numbers of people. It’s been a difficult few months, and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.
This time in history has brought about immense feelings of loneliness and isolation as people are forced to live away from friends and family and avoid public outings to reduce their chances of infection. And as reported by ScreenRant, it’s here where we begin to see a glimmer of similarities to an apocalyptic world last seen in the 2007 film I Am Legend, a movie based almost entirely on solitude and the resulting negative impact it has on a person.
I Am Legend – based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name – stars Will Smith as Robert Neville, one of humanity’s last survivors after a viral outbreak wiped out all but 12 million humans on the planet and then turned 90% of those into mutated abominations known as Darkseekers. Neville is a virologist seeking to discover more about the virus and find whether or not more humans may have survived the outbreak. It’s a dark film full of desolation as our forlorn hero tries to uncover the central mystery and deal with his own feelings of loneliness in a world seemingly doomed to keep crumbling around him.
While our current situation is awful, it’s admittedly less dire than that of the world Neville inhabits in the film, but there is another distressing similarity nonetheless. The flashbacks in the movie show that Manhattan, New York was evacuated and quarantined, resulting in Neville losing his wife and daughter. Currently, New York is the epicenter of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. with nearly 85,000 cases in the state alone, and it’s currently experiencing the strictest social distancing enforcement in the country.
Unlike in the film, New York hasn’t been locked down by police or military enforcement (and likely won’t be), and we don’t have to worry about our sick turning into zombies, of course. Still, these early moments of the outbreak feel eerily similar to those in I Am Legend – at least enough so to make for some uncomfortable viewing for those experiencing anxiety during the pandemic.
In any case, stay safe, keep your hands washed and stay tuned here for more on COVID-19 and its effects on day-to-day events around the world.
