The Crazies - 2010
Directed by: Breck Eisner
Starring: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell
The Plot: There's strange doins' in the town of Ogden Marsh. Strange doins indeedy. Like everybody's going crazy and killing each other. Wonder if the government's involved???
The Good: Stephen King built a small fortune tuning up tales like this. Take a small, innocent, American town. Rape, torture, and heinously murder every last single living unwilling participant. You've got the workings of a classic King yarn.
Ogden Marsh could have been Jerusalem's Lot, Castle Rock, or, even more recently - Chester's Mill. It's that slice of American pie that's fun to stick in the oven, crank the heat up to 550 degrees, and watch the hellish results as it blackens, blisters, chars, and finally bursts into one last effort of lethal smoke and flame.
The big difference between Breck Eisner's The Crazies and any one of a hundred Stephen King short stories is that Mr. King knows how to color his town in - fill it with folks we can empathize with, or feel disgust toward. He also pulls few punches with his literary offspring. King beats his babies. Eisner, on the other hand, seems like he's in a big hurry. Characters are sketched, some are even shaded a bit, but most are never fully realized. Tim Olyphant's the Sheriff. His wife's the town doctor. I doubt even King would have written a relationship as easy as this one is on the narrative. It's a match made in fictional bliss.
If it seems like I'm struggling with The Good portion of this review, please don't take that as a sign that this is an awful film - it really isn't. Any film work that can remind me of the thousands of minutes I spent as a young adult gripping and flipping through the latest King novel is a film worth noticing. The Crazies, for the most part, lives up to what it promises. The problem I had with this flick is that I'm not a horror virgin. My cherry was popped before I learned to drive a car. I've seen and done it all at this point - been around the block so many times the houses would need to be on fire for me to get too excited about the journey. Which we should probably discuss right here...
The Bad: I thought this movie was called The Crazies? Where's all the gawdamn Crazies at? The film, as it turns out, should have been called Military Chemical Spill. Because that's 89% of the content here. Those expecting patrons of standard sanity levels being hunted down and brutally savaged by those with a lesser hold on lucidity might feel a bit let down by the film as it plays out. This is a horror/survival film where the villains hold machine guns and walk around in thirty dollar hazmat suits. The Crazies are just a twisted little rind of garnish on an otherwise tasteless platter of Big Bad Military Experiment sandwiches.
There's a bit of hometown looniness, a small amount of violence and gore, but the film is a bit more serious than it probably should have been. Even Stevie King knows when to push aside the tears and drama and let the pig bleed a little bit.
That's what makes The Crazies kind of a conundrum. It's not a bad movie - though its title may suggest otherwise - it's just not a very original one. If you're going to make a film about a small Middle American town that's been poisoned by a biological weapon - a weapon that will turn them all into mindless machinations of homicidal fury - you better make it pretty gawdamn good. You better make it frightening, or you better plug it up with an unholy amount of blood and body parts to make it at least gruesome enough to make a solid conversational piece. The Crazies just doesn't get there.
The Ugly: It's really not that bad of a movie. I can't point out anything that made my eyes roll too hard or fingered my "piss-off" button too vigorously. It is what it is....
The Verdict: The Crazies feels like Cormac Mcarthy - but condensed so that Jenny McCarthy can follow it. I was hoping for better, could have gotten worse, and am now just sitting here politely pondering Revelation 3:16 and the odd relevance that the verse might have on modern horror film criticism...
Did I get it all wrong? Check out the Tampa Movie Examiner's It-AIn't Original-But-Didn't-Need-To-Be review for The Crazies right here. Or check out Tom Clocker's (Baltimore's man-machine of Movie Examination) I-Practically-Pissed-Myself-With-Love review for the flick right here. Other than that leave me a sharp comment below.
Comments
compared to Romero's original, its a far sight better :)
Roestel,
I thought only my girlfriend called me a man-machine. But, thanks nonetheless. You do have a point about you being a veteran horror fan. I, myself, am not all that versed in the genre. That's probably one reason I liked it so much.
Still, great review!
Horror fan - Compared to the original you might be right. Doesn't make it a great movie though.
Tom Clocker - I think that it's a movie I would screen for my less horror-friendly friends and family. It's a horror flick my Mom could watch.
Too much yappin in this movie. Good take on it being like an "introductary" piece for new horror fans.
Great review. I did think it was better than the original, but it still felt flat overall. Seemed to just borrow ideas from other horror films the past few years, combine them, and throw them in this remake. It did seem to be on the tame side as far as horror movies go.
I like what I'm reading here; nice review Jason.
It is interesting to note that the original came out before Stephen King published his first novel. The original was nothing special, but The Crazies, aka the infected townspeople, were in it more. I did not give this film too much love in my review. They advertise this as a horror film when it really is not one.
Chenging the subject, our commercials come out this week.
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