The Crazies

The Crazies gave me a little hope in the American horror film. Not a lot, but a little. The Crazies could be called an American horror masterpiece. I’m not going to go that far, but it was definitely a masterful execution of the American horror formula.

It follows Sheriff Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) and Judy Dutton (Radha Mitchell) who live in a quiet little town in Iowa. They have normal lives until Dutton is forced to shoot a man in front of an entire little league game. Why? Well, the man walks out with a shotgun and points it at Dutton. It was a necessary killing, but that doesn’t leave the town uneasy.

If that wasn’t enough, only shortly after that another man in the town burns his whole family in a house fire. Dutton knows something’s up. Him and his deputy, Clank (Joe Anderson) begin to investigate a mysterious pilot found dead in the woods. What they uncover is big trouble. A crashed plane carrying a military virus in it. That shit is in the drinking water now!

To say the least, I have always been floored by the premise that George A. Romero came up with so many years ago. I’ve heard this film referred to as a zombie flick. That’s not entirely true, because the zombies still have the capacity to drive, shoot, talk, communicate, even tie someone up. Am I being pedantic about the semantics of zombism? Probably a little. But my point is zombie movies are dead outside of comedy. They’re just not scary anymore. Sorry Romero. They killed your movies. Copycats filmmakers…not zombies.

What is scary in these films is the lock down that happens due to the virus being spread. The military locks down and begins to systemically genocide the town. The film has wonderful production values. The military scenes, as well as the horror scenes, are fantastic and are handled with great technical skill for a movie with a smaller budget. If you could call twenty million dollars small…

Another thing to mention is that Timothy Olyphant is proving he has real star power. Yes, he has headlined films before, but I really think that he carried this movie in a very powerful way. Considering he really had to act and he was on screen almost the entire film.

Now I’ll throw one gripe out there, which makes the movie very good, not great. The gore was a little on the lighter side. Not light side, lighter. I wanted buckets. I’m just saying…give the people what they want. Less isn’t more these days. Putting a lot of gore in a horror movie isn’t selling out, it is adding to the picture. I think if there were some really great splatter moments, it could have been the best horror movie in quite some time.

Release date:  February 2010

Collin says: A-

You’ll say: B

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