The Crazies (2010) – on rental. I queued up a lot of films while we were away in Japan, and now that we’re back, I can get back to watching rentals when I can find the time to and continue writing notes on them.
I’m not normally a fan of horror films, but The Crazies did make me sit up to notice it more than usual. This remake of a classic from the 1970s had preview trailers running in several films we caught in the theaters earlier this year, and it starred Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell, two actors I’ve watched before and enjoy performances of. I had no illusions about the film likely to be derivative though – the repeated preview trailers themselves made clear the general premise of the film’s story, and it wasn’t anything you haven’t already seen before in other films.
Still, for those of us not already aware; the film is set in a small fictional farming town in the United States. The story is told through Olyphant (below left) and Mitchell’s (below right) characters. They play David – the town’s sheriff – and Judy – its doctor – a married couple, and all is peaceful in the town until a military grade biological weapon is accidentally released into it. The viral weapon infects the town’s populace and turning them into blood thirsty zombie-like killers and who turn on each other and those not infected. The military is called in to harshly stop the virus from spreading, with the usual human casualties and the like.
Yep, it contains stuff you’ve already seen before, including from mainstream films like Alien vs Predator 2, Outbreak etc, and there are elements of it even in non-horror disaster films like Dante’s Peak, i.e. that town leaders are slow to believe that something is seriously wrong, and in their lethargy to take action become complicit to the horror that follows, and the take-no-prisoner’s approach the military adopts.
The film runs briskly for its run length of about 100 minutes. In fact, it wastes no time putting the film to main story-telling by doing away with much of the usual early scenes that provide character backgrounds, preferring instead to weave into the main plot dialog fragments that explain each character’s personality and their relationships to their neighbors and friends, many of whom will turn into those zombie-killers when they too become infected.
There are also plenty of ‘BOO!!!!’ moments. You can tell a scary moment’s coming from the creepy music that foreshadows it, the lighting, and the loud orchestral ‘hits’ that accompany accompany those moments. So, the film presents its package in a pretty safe manner – it’s not too scary for those of us not used to this sort of film. So, yep it’d be safe for Ling LOL. But on the other hand, The Crazies might disappoint horror fans looking for their next scare-fix. There’s, surprisingly, a relative low gore quotient. Oh, people do get killed – but a lot of it is framed in such a way that you don’t really see many parts that might upset those of us with gentler dispositions. In addition, the story’s outcome at the end of the film won’t really surprise, nor even the additional scene that runs during the end-credits roll. It’s really that formulaic.
In all, watchable. Safe too. Just not likely to leave that big an impression.
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