The Crazies

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but i liked it. i don't usually go to horror films but a premiere screening at the Vista was hard to resist. This film does not look cheap. The effects were good, the actors were believable, the thing kept moving. There's some graphic stuff, but it's a horror film and no real gross out factor. And it just kept coming, it was spare, not a lot of fat. It's not an original story and some things you know are going to reappear later, but because it kept moving, you didn't have time to dwell on the fact that they were coming back. It was kind of cool that when we walked up to the theater they made the marquee say "Ogden Marsh Cinemas".

Very rarely I find a good horror that I can watch over and over! This certainly is one a rare one. I have watched this about a dozen times now and it keeps me interested each time. Now that is a good story line!!! They have combined two of my favourite types of movies in one. Just won't spoil it for you! Enjoy.......

In Pierce County, Iowa, the Sheriff David (Timothy Olyphant) is forced to kill the local Rory Hamill (Mike Hickman) that is threatening the community in a baseball game with a rifle and an insane behavior. Then his wife Dr. Judy (Radha Mitchell) examines another local, Bill Farnum (Brett Rickaby), who has a strange behavior. In the night, Bill traps his wife and son in the room and then he burns their house to the ground. On the next morning, David and his Deputy Russell Clank (Joe Anderson) are called by three hunters that had found a dead pilot in the Hopman Bog. David and Russell find a big airplane in the bottom of the bog. Sooner the army seals off the town and imprisons the population in tents and concentration camps. David, Russell, Judy and her assistant Becca (Danielle Panabaker) escape and sooner they discover that the plane was airborne with a biological weapon and crashed contaminating the water supply of the population. Further, there is no antidote for the victims that are doomed to die or become incurably mad. The quartet tries to find a breach in the containment to reach the next town, but the escapees are hunted by the army. I usually hate remakes, but "The Crazies" (2010) is a rare case when the remake is better than the original film of George Romero. The tense plot is slightly different from the original story of 1973 that reflected the paranoia of those years of Cold War. Further, the plot focuses in the personal drama of David and Judy and not in the military action like in the 1973 movie. The screenplay, direction and performances are above average and this film worth watching. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "A Epidemia" ("The Epidemics")

Simply put, "The Crazies" stunk. I was satisfied after a strong opening 20 minutes, but then it sunk like the Titanic (the boat, not the movie, lol)! It slowly transformed from thoughtful and intriguing (like an old "Twilight Zone" episode) to resorting to cheap scares (loud BOOM out of nowhere that would awaken someone out of a coma) and "saved at the last second" scenes. One "saved at the last second" scene could have been predicted by a blind Stevie Wonder! Sheriff and Deputy arrive at a house. Sheriff goes one way, the Deputy another. Sheriff gets "cheap-scared" after searching an empty room, a loud boom noise from the movie's Score, then turns around to a pair of sneaky (and previously QUIET) zombies! After a struggle, a few bullets shot, and the nozzle of a gun pointed right at the Sheriff...quick shot of the gun, quick shot of the scared Sheriff, quick shot of the gun, another shot of the Sheriff who's resigned to death...then guess what? BOOM! The trusty Deputy is there to save the day, pulling the trigger at the very last moment! Wow, I couldn't have seen that one coming! (And to top it off, he somehow had the angle -- and the viewpoint to see what the heck was going on upstairs -- to shoot the zombie in the heart from the front lawn!) Lots of corny lines (when pointing a gun at the Sheriff, the Deputy says "ONE...TWO...THREE...that's how many times I saved your life!") and unbelievable situations continue. Small points also make little sense. One of the zombies, at the beginning stages of becoming a zombie, actually gets taken to the doctor. After reacting extremely strangely to the doctor, so strange that the doctor should consider hospitalization or getting mental experts involved, she basically says to the family "Have him take two of these and call me in the morning"! Guy goes home and proceeds to kill his family. Doctor, after a complete swing and a miss on the diagnosis, takes no responsibility for the deaths whatsoever. Movie moves on. Blah. The movie isn't entirely without merit though. I thought it was actually well-made from a technical standpoint. The actors, though inexperienced, showed a passion for acting. After the 2005 debacle that was "Sahara", one of the least memorable movies in modern history, Director Brent Eisner finally got a job 5 years later...and I he did well in his return. He should do fine being at the helm for "Flash Gordon" in 2012. The Crazies...great start then descends into mediocrity at best. See it at your own peril! JD (LittleShopOfPosters.com >> Coming soon!)

This remake of the 1973 George Romero film sees the rural Iowa town of Ogden Marsh become unhinged when it's residents begin exhibiting odd behavior, usually culminating in acts of violence. Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) is at a loss to explain what's happening to the people he's known all his life, but the discovery of a dead pilot in a marsh leads him to the answer, a downed plane infecting the town's water supply. It isn't long before the military has blocked all methods of communication and descended upon the town. Determined to render a final solution, they don't intend to let anyone out alive. Following the basic setup of the original, this update expands upon the story and throws in a few new directions and surprises. If you ask me, there was plenty of room for improvement. Romero's film is decent, but highly flawed. You could blame the budget, but Romero's done some fantastic work with low budgets. It definitely had bigger problems than that. This is the type of remake I wish there were more of, the type that can improve on a weak original. We spend the majority of the film with the four main characters as they attempt to escape the madness; David, his wife (Radha Mitchell), his deputy (Joe Anderson) and his wife's secretary (Danielle Pannabaker). I was already a fan of both Olyphant and the lovely Mitchell before viewing this, and they're once again in solid form here. This is basically Olyphant's show, and he owns the screen when he's on. I'd love to see him get more leading roles after this. Anderson and Pannabaker are also impressive, getting me to care about the fates of their characters, something that many horror films have a hard time doing. One of the major differences between this and the Romero original is the lack of focus on the military's point of view this time around. We spend the duration seeing the events from the perspective of the leads and various other townsfolk. While the POV shown in the '73 film did offer some levels of interest, I think it works better as far as menace goes to not do that here. The crazies themselves are well rendered, each person reacting differently to the virus. Some are completely gone while others still retain some semblance of a thought process, the hunters for instance. After seeing the trailer, I was worried that they'd turn this into another zombie movie, but I was happy to see that wasn't the case. Speaking of the crazies, Lynn Lowry (of the original, Shivers, I Drink Your Blood, etc.) pops up very briefly as one of them. A nice little nod there, and I noticed another potential nod to a similar film, 1984's Impulse, in which contaminated milk leads people to act on their base impulses. A scene of Olyphant running after a mysterious vehicle that has been documenting the carnage mirrors a sequence from that picture. Also of note is Maxime Alexandre's gorgeous cinematography. Eisner was smart in getting him, as he's done equally stellar work for Alexandre Aja in the past. Thankfully, the use of CGI is minimal. In fact, I don't believe any pops up until the end, and when we get to that, it actually works just fine. The film is peppered with a number of suitably tense set-pieces, particularly one involving a pitchfork, a scene in a car wash and the aforementioned ending. On the downside, there are a few cheap jump scares thrown in. The music also struck me as being rather pedestrian at times. Overall though, I can safely say I'll be returning to this one more often than the 1973 effort.

A transport plane crashes into the water supply of a small Iowa town. Some of the townfolks become infected and turn crazed killers. Sheriff (Timothy Olyphant), his wife (Radha Mitchell), his deputy (Joe Anderson), and a girl from town (Danielle Panabaker) need to escape not only the crazies, but also the military sent to contain the population. This is remake of a George A. Romero movie. It's not that complicated. It is a horror movie done classically without the jokey references or overt sexualization. There are no gross out jokes or T&A. It is just simple tense horror done right. The scariest scene has to be the women tied down on the gurneys, and a crazy walks in. If you want simple horror, this is all you need.

A murky and unnecessary remake of George Romero's Vietnam-era original that could have improved upon Romero's talky gore fest, but it quickly becomes a long- winded and repetitive chase without much suspense and even less originality. All too often, the music cues up, something leaps out and so it goes and goes and goes. The film would have benefited from a slow, eerie build-up where things are gradually revealed to be off kilter, but the film pretty much plunges into the action with minimal characterization providing little reason to care. The script might make a decent Twilight Zone episode, but as a feature film it becomes tiring long before the end. Unfortunately, The Crazies wastes a good premise and decent actors. You'd be crazy to waste your time and money on it. There's not a single original or memorable moment in the entire forgettable mess.

Although recently I have seen quite a few horror films, I am not very familiar with the original horror classics made by George Romero. Most of them are supposed to be thrilling and much better than the modern day remakes, yet I did enjoy Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead (2004). Originality is hard to develop in horror films because most audiences have seen everything before in previous motion pictures. You can make a blood-splattering zombie, vampire, or serial killer movie but chances are another filmmaker has already created a film with a similar story, bigger stars, and more gore. Yet every once in a while a director will come up with a clever story in order to make up for the lack of innovation in modern horror films. Last year's Paranormal Activity (2009) is one of those exceptions and so is Breck Eisner's The Crazies (2010). If our own government accidentally dropped a biological weapon on a small country town, would it take precautions to cover it up or would it admit the mistake and take necessary measures to help those infected? This is the situation in The Crazies, in which each family of a small town in Iowa begin developing violent symptoms and start losing their minds. One day at a high school baseball game a local farmer comes onto a baseball field with a double barrel shotgun. After failing to talk the crazed man out of dropping the gun, the local sheriff named David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) is forced to shoot him. At first it is believed that the incident was a consequence of the farmer drinking too much but soon other citizens of the town begins acting in a familiar way. One man burns his house down while his wife and child are locked within. Another man appears to have lost the ability to speak. Confused about what is happening, David and his deputy go searching for possible leads to what could be causing the disturbing behavior of the locals. In their search they discover a crashed plane underneath the town's river and they soon see that it is no coincidence that those who live closest to the water supply are slowly developing symptoms of the strange disease. A few days after the first signs of the virus, military personnel suddenly appear and take everyone in town into custody. At the military base, David and his wife are separated because it is believed that she has been infected. The rest of the film follows David's journey to try and save his wife. Can he trust the government to do the right thing and take care of his wife or is he the only one who can save her? Although the Crazies themselves are entertaining, it is nothing viewers probably haven't seen before. They basically act exactly like zombies minus the biting. What separates this film from other horror films are the emotions shared by the main characters and the political questions brought up about how our government might handle the accidental insurgence of biological weapons on U.S. soil. Naturally every character begins to become paranoid over the fact that his or her friends and family may have become infected, yet how to you deal with knowing that your loved ones will soon become uncontrollably disturbed and may try to kill you. It is amazing, yet understandable how people's personalities can suddenly change at the first sign of any danger. Overall, The Crazies has enough action and gore to satisfy horror movie fans, but is also clever enough to separate it from most other modern horror remakes. So far this has been the biggest surprise for me in 2010.

Not your run of the mill horror movie, The Crazies is a respectfully updated version of the original. It's not about blowing stuff up and gore and frightening chills but truly about surviving the errors and mistakes that have been created by the US. All from a downed plane. You enjoy the visual and the change of pace as our protagonists dodge 'crazies' and the military. It all works and falls into place, which is funny because some movies can get away with that yet most don't. The Crazies is what I hoped 28 Days Later would have been essentially and I recommend the film for fans of the zombie genre. With the exception of some overlength, the wit and intelligence of the script will give the film some decent legs, if not on screen, then guaranteed in the long run.