Thanks for checking out our The Crazies review.
Genre: Horror Suspense
Directed by: Breck Eisner
Staring:Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, Danielle Panabaker
Released: February 26th, 2010
THE GENERAL IDEA
As a toxin begins to turn the residents of Ogden Marsh, Iowa into violent psychopaths, Sheriff David Dutton (Olyphant) tries to make sense of the situation while he, his wife (Mitchell), and two other unaffected townspeople band together in a fight for survival.
THE GOOD
I really liked how this movie doesn’t just go for the cheap scares (though it will hop you out of your seat even if you do see the popup coming) but it also makes you fully aware of how close these people are, how this small town has a community of people who all know each other and how tragic it is to have them turning on each other. Its not just a day at the park with a perfect picnic lunch and then everyone is over run with zombie-like catatonic mudering crazy people. This hits the heart first, THEN chaos ensues. It matters.
The action keeps you going, and you really care about these people trying to survive.
And the core group trying to escape this insanity are TRULY faced with a sense of impossible odds. The hoplessness is just tangible. It just doesn’t end, and even though they are running every plot point just illustrates that they really don’t know where they are running to.
THE BAD
There are a few logical plotholes that kind of go unnoticed, but start to bug you afterwards. Its hard to point these out without spoiling, but the people “watching” the town are so easily able to track them, but are completely incapable of finding our survivors?
The whole idea that they are able to hide this from the rest of the world bugs me and seems completely implausible. But then it is a movie about zombie like crazy people – still I want it to make sense.
OVERALL
A fun suspenseful movie with some great action, some zombie-esque horror and a great cast. You really feel for these people and that is a quality I think many horror films forget about. Killing off faceless strangers doesn’t make you empathize with the horrors they are facing.
Oh, and there is a stinger after the credits, so if you go, stay in your seats. It kind of ties up a loose end about the coverup, but one I can’t see people just shrugging their shoulders to and saying “Awww.. That’s too bad”
I give The Crazies a 8 out of 10
