The Crazies (2010)
directed by Breck Eisner
Starring
Timothy Olyphant
Radha Mitchell
Joe Anderson
Danielle Panabaker
The Crazies poses the question, what is scarier, the crazy people in your home town or the government’s clean up protocol after a viral outbreak? Infected by the ’Trixie’ virus, the citizens of a small mid western town become violent and aggressive, acting on the fearful instinct of the inner reptilian brain. Sometimes I feel like all of the US has drank the Kool Aid and is now infected. We follow sheriff, David Dutton, as he attempts to; first discover what has gone wrong in his hometown, then to get his wife and himself out of harms way of the crazies and the military’s crack down on them. I had instant and deep empathy for the sheriff and cheered for his survival and plight. The film had the perfect ratio of emotional weight and violent action with a remarkable ending that makes the journey worth taking. It is a remake of the 1973 George Romero film and one of those rare remakes that is better than the original.
A high action and horrifying journey as we watch a small town fall into the pits of hell.
I give it 3.9 crazed killer corpses on the venomous viral outbreak scale.
parlor of horror 
Great review, I found this to be a really scary film with plenty of action and creepiness in it. I confess to jumping a whole lot of times during my viewing of it.
scary stuff for sure!
I remember eating popcorn and nearly spiling it a few times.
Great review! This was a really good film. It built up the strange events as the virus began to change people. From there is got really violent and scary, great film!
And it seems feasible, like it can really happen one day.
Flawed as it may be, I still love the original. I caught this in the theaters. I thought it was okay, but I haven’t seen it since.
I can appreciate that, the original has a rawness to it that feels very real.
I still feel like pacing is an issue in the original, but some of the scenes are memorable and the Richard Liberty/Lynn Lowery relationship is icky.
I should check out the remake again. I have a bad habit of not giving newer movies a fair shot.
Excellent! I LOVE this movie!
it’s crazy…er. Better description in the review…
It’s certainly a compelling remake, but lord almighty, Eisner has given us, as identifiable heroes and sympathetic lead characters, the usual doses of uber-white, good-looking guys and highly attractive young women. The population of Ogden Marsh (word play on Ogden Nash?) resembles no rural community I have ever encountered.
And although animals – animal actors, so to speak – are difficult to wrangle and are an expensive hire for any movie, the world if The Crazies appears to be set in farm country with very, very little livestock. As Hitchcock understood (The Birds), the trick is to lay the groundwork/setting with an identifiable, believable community into which the elements of off-kilter disturbance are gradually introduced. The Crazies reboot is entertaining, has tense moments, but no, the setting is just too groomed and white. Sexy people not having sex. Which is a pity, because the entire planet is still dealing with HIV/AIDS, that archetypal sexually transmitted virus. Eisner just isn’t socio-politically astute enough to understand that, and focused instead on anti-government paranoia – government as both bringer of dis-ease and destroyer of the same; except that the elimination of contagion involves destruction of the very fabric of the US heartland.
I think films today only want to make very soft sociopolitical statements. It’s not like films form the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Studios want to make millions and that means to have the most consumers possible relate to and accept the film and to not ‘rock the boat’ too hard. The last horror film I saw with a strong statement was They Live. Chances are a more pointed film would not have been funded. As far as the town, I think an homogenization of town life makes it relate-able to more people because many people live in small towns that are not farm towns. Once again, even if it’s watered down, it reaches as many people/consumers as possible.
In ‘It Follows’, the deaths parallel the HIV virus, but the solution in that film is to just pass it on to someone else, which is a resolution I detest. I even mention this in my review of the film and is why I don’t like the film as much as others. And It Follows seems to be embraced by younger generations – it is kind of disturbing on that level, however I think a lot of younger people are not even seeing the symbolism of the film and just thinking of it as a ghost film.
The biggest disappointment for me is modern sci-fi. Sci-fi always had a message about the world and our place in it. Not no more. Most new sci-fi films are just action stories for light entertainment. Not to say I don’t like some of them but most of them don’t really SAY anything. It’s just something to watch. There will never be another ending like the half submerged Liberty Statue in Planet of the Apes because people today don’t accept criticism in their entertainment – even though they will jump on every chance to personally criticize someone on FB and social media. What they did to Carrie Fisher when they saw she had aged is disgusting, all for a chance to be funny or be mean. But I do accept some films as just entertainment these days. To me they will never be classics but they are entertaining.
I think I saw this a year or two ago, not bad at all. Timothy Olyphant is a great choice for the lead role.
Cool flick!
Good review. Loved this film when I saw it and shockingly, I have not seen the original. One day…
The original, if I’m remembering correctly has a bit of abstract filmmaking in it, where at times your not completely sure what’s going on.
I really liked this flick. I give it a watch at least once a year. I haven’t seen the original in a long time, since my VHS days lol. Good review, Mike!
I love this movie – great casting, amazing score, and some scenes that just stay with you forever (the guy in the hospital with the pitchfork… shudder). In fact, I might pull out the BluRay and watch it again today!