I just saw this movie last night. First of all, I give it a lot of points for great atmosphere. All the outdoor sequences were splendidly done. The sound design was excellent, Smith really got into his character and OMG I LOVED THE DOG.
I looked up the alternate ending and quite frankly, didn't like it much. Too Hollywood and was somewhat reminiscent of the Mama T-Rex from The Lost World, wreaking havoc to reclaim her baby. It also didn't help that the Dark Seekers sounded like something from the Jurassic Park movies.
In the theatrical ending, I initially couldn't figure out why Neville had to sacrifice himself. Trying to justify it, I figured that he had spent the past three years trying to come up with a cure. He had already lost his wife and kid and now, his only companion (Sam) too. I just think the dude lost his will (err) to live. He finally got what he had worked for all along (the cure) and was probably sick of the whole fight-hunt-forage-capture-research-rinse-repeat way of life. I think he just wanted 'out' of the system. So he handed the cure to the woman and decided to put himself out of his misery. He was pretty certain that there was no 'survivor's colony' and even if there was, it only meant spending the rest of his life doing what he had been doing all along (fight-hunt-forage-capture-research-rinse-repeat).
I haven't read the book so I won't comment on the 'faithfulness' of the adaptation. But the movie certainly had its fair share of heart-pounding (and also one heartbreaking) moments. I still don't know how the woman was able to save Will but I'm going to guess she was a tough cookie to have survived (and protected a child) for three years - maybe she had been a badass (like Anna Lucia Cortez in Lost) and the movie just doesn't show us what she had been up to for the past three years.
I still prefer the theatrical ending, even though that grenade seemed unreal.
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