02/28/10 - The Crazies

The Crazies (2010, 101 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455407/

The Crazies will earn the distinction of being the first 2010-released film I check out. The trailer made it look really good so I was excited. I thought about seeing the original Romero The Crazies but decided I'd check this one out first.

The film follows a town as it gets its water supply poisoned. The government then puts the town on lockdown so as to prevent the virus from spreading. The main group that the movie follows is: the sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant), his wife and town doctor Judy Dutton (Radha Mitchell), the deputy Russell Clark (Joe Anderson), and an employee of Judy's named Becca Darling (Danielle Panabaker).

With a movie of this sort, it's important for the viewer to like the main characters. Thanks to some overall good acting this was the case here. The character I liked the least was that of Becca and that was mainly because she didn't do much for me to like her. She really didn't do much for me to dislike her either, though. Anyway, she was the first to die of this group leaving the three characters I did like. Russell was the coolest of these three and I liked him the most. He brought a good balance of cool and rationality to the group. The main duo of David and Judy worked well off of each other and were able to carry the last thirty minutes or so by themselves pretty easily.

Naturally I'm going to compare zombies to these infected. The biggest advantage to these infected was that they were fundamentally still human. This meant they were able to think and use reasoning and even handle weaponry. A couple scenes incorporated this in a good way. On the other hand, there wasn't the terror and gruesome factor that comes with zombies. The fear of the infected killing someone from the group by eating them was just never there. This resulted in the "enemies" of the film being not all that scary for me. There were a few tense moments (more on these later) but overall I never felt the ominous presence of evil like I do in a zombie movie - and that's even when I include the government team as an enemy. The lack of a true, frightening antagonist really hurt in my opinion.

The movie does, however, have quite a few jumpy moments. A lot of times they set these up with excellent framing so you know they're coming, but still manage to produce a jolt, playing up the typical clichés really well. Easily the two best scenes in the film were the scene where the one infected was stabbing the other infected in the bed and the car wash scene. I felt there was a little too much of the "shoulder grab scare" that is used with rising tense music, but overall that's forgivable. In a similar sense, there were a few times when the movie broke all believability and became somewhat silly. Surviving - without hardly any scratches - a nearby nuclear blast in a truck without having your seat belt on? Pretty outlandish in my opinion. I guess in the whole scheme of things I can overlook this (at least it's better than surviving in a refrigerator). What was great, though, was how the government was a step ahead of the survivors and knew what they would do. It added a good degree of hopelessness to the total situation.

Overall, I gave this film a 6/10. It's pretty good and definitely leaves with the feeling of wanting to check out the older Romero version. However, no real, true adversary coupled with some silly moments hurt the end product. I'm glad I checked it out, but "infected" movies just aren't as fundamentally scary as "zombie" movies are for me.

[Note: Due to a voting update, I have changed the rating of The Crazies to a 5/10.]