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The Crazies

Rating:★★★★
Category:Movies
Genre: Horror
I went to see a movie for the first time in a few years. The experience hasn't improved much; still paying wayyyy too much money for a ticket and way way way way too much for popcorn. For comparison, at the local race track I can get a bag of popcorn for a buck (at my daughter's softball games, 50cents) but for the same size bag, I paid 4 dollars. Seriously??? and then theaters don't make money? why the hell not? If a movie theater isn't making money it's employees must be blowing it all up their collective noses.
Oops, I digress...
The Crazies is a remake of the original by my movie hero, George Romero, who brings us zombies mixed in with social and political commentary to make a good 'screw with your head' kinds of movies *happy sigh*
At any rate, this new version leaves out the political aspect of the original, and it ends up working very well. More on that in a minute.
The story centers around the small town of Ogden Marsh (a real place, which is a nice change) Iowa and the sheriff, his deputy, his wife (the town doc) and a teenage girl who works in the doctor's office.
The movie starts off with scenes from typical Midwestern Americana (typical for those of us who live it anyway) and then, at a typical small town baseball game that everyone is hyped about, a guy comes out onto the field with a shotgun. The sheriff is forced to shoot him and ends up discovering something strange going on when another guy he knows starts acting funny. In the process, the sheriff and the deputy discover a plane crashed into the water supply and despite the mayor's protest, they shut down the water.

Other people start acting weird and the sheriff sees a 'government' black vehicle that takes off before he can catch up to it. The original movie made heavy with the government conspiracy issue but the remake is noticeably devoid of that. While I am a fan of Romero's and the way he mixes socio-political commentary with horror (zombies as unthinking society) I also liked the whole, "okay, what's the government up to? what's going on?" angle that saturates the movie. It's entirely up to the sheriff and his group to try to find out what's going on and we are wondering right along with them. In the end, they never do find out all the way since an infected person took out the only source of info. Even better!

I felt Mr. Romero was well represented in two separate parts of the movie; the first being the scenes where the main characters are separated because the doctor is supposedly infected and placed in quarantine. All the "non-infecteds" are rounded up and put elsewhere for relocation but the sheriff won't go without his wife. A memorable scene has the sheriff rebuking a townsperson about why the man is trying to talk him out of going back for his wife. (The townsperson had no problem abandoning his own) This definitely reminded me of the herd mentality theme Romero uses.

The other scene reminiscent of Romero is toward the end, when the sheriff and his wife discover what happens to the "herd."

Timothy Olyphant was entirely believable as a sheriff (not sure about small-town sheriff, but he did well) but it was Joe Anderson's performance as the deputy Russell Clank that stole the movie for me. I absolutely believed that this guy was a small town deputy, tall and lanky with a very nice homage to the fu-manchu. I was thinking at the time that I really needed to get back to my small town roots and find me a hot deputy like that. Then I find out he's a blond Brit with some amazing blue eyes who's only 26! (drats) In fact, I had no idea he was the same guy who played Matthias in the movie the Ruins (that I watched the week before on DVD). Now to me, that's the mark of a great actor.

The doctor played by Rhada Mitchell also gave a good performance as the movie progresses you wait to see if she or (any of the others) is "infected" and just when you think yes, or no, there's a scene to make you wonder again.

All in all, this movie wasn't as 'in your face' scary as I like generally but it was absolutely scary in the overall tone and 'message' of the movie. Just what I like to see. And if they redesigned and revamped a George Romero classic, that's fine too, because to me they still managed to keep the essence of what makes a Romero movie great.
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