Unsettling Crazies a Bloody Thrill Ride
The citizens of Ogden Marsh are not acting like themselves, Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), who is also the town doctor, trapped in the middle of something that is slowly ripping their close-knit farming community to pieces. Things get progressively worse when the military arrives wearing gasmasks separating families into differing corners cruelly shooting those who refuse to follow their orders.
Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell in Overture Films' The Crazies
With the clock ticking against them David, Judy, Sheriff’s deputy Russell Clank (Joe Anderson) and medical assistant Becca Darling (Danielle Panabaker) decide to see if they can make it out of town without the soldiers gunning them down. But the infection turning the once-pleasant residents of Ogden Marsh into crazy inhuman monsters is slowly spreading, and if the military doesn’t punch the quartet’s ticket into the afterlife it’s becoming increasingly likely one of their former neighbors probably will.
Loosely based on the 1973 horror epic written and directed by zombie maestro George A. Romero, Breck Eisner’s (Sahara) surprisingly solid The Crazies is a gloriously suspenseful and scary B-movie I got a real kick out of. While Scott Kosar (The Machinist) and Ray Wright’s (Pulse) doesn’t go anywhere new it still manages to offer up a few surprises, the final product a deliciously nasty throwback that ends up doing its predecessor proud.
The best thing about this remake is its refusal to pull any of its punches. The disease turning decent farmers into homicidal maniacs is just as horrific as the thought of the United State’s military callously hunting down its own citizenry, both presented as simple facts neither one worse than the other. Much like 28 Days Later the cure might just be worse than the disease, and while I sat in the theatre hoping our heroes would find help I couldn’t help but shudder in the realization that doing so might only speed up their demise.
Eisner presents their journey with matter-of-fact efficiency, and while he’s not above trading in some John Carpenter-like jump-scare theatricality I still appreciated his ferociously carnal point of view. I got the feeling that anything could happen, and while things do get a tad silly during the literally explosive climax up until then I was so at the edge of my seat it’s sort of surprise I didn’t fall right off of it.
Some of this is admittedly pretty darn silly, and while a third act confrontation in a seemingly empty truck stop is efficiently staged I can’t say anything that happens during this portion excited near as much as the opening two-thirds did. These scenes are clumsily written and maybe even a tiny bit lazy, and although the actors go out of their way to make them sing I never once felt like cheering them on as they valiantly struggled to stay alive.
But by golly are those opening portions wonderful. The sense of dread permeating throughout came darn close to ripping my heart straight out of my ribcage, scenes of fathers setting their homes afire and middle-aged women creepily acting like adolescents giving me Goosebumps I’m sure will last for days. I also loved the dynamic passing between Olyphant and Mitchell, the two sharing a marital chemistry that made their shared struggles all the more poignant.
Could The Crazies have been better? Without a doubt, but just because that’s so it doesn’t mean I still didn’t like it one heck of a lot. The film has an urgency about it that’s visceral and heart-pounding, and by the time it was over I couldn’t help but breath a happy sigh of relief that I’d made it to the end. This is the type of B-movie rollercoaster thrill ride I’d by a second ticket for in a heartbeat, Eisner and company doing Romero proud crafting an end of the world horror epic I couldn’t get enough of.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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