Review of The Crazies (2010) by Bryank — 27 Feb 2010

In a film year of remakes such as The Karate Kid, highly awaited sequels such as Toy Story 3 and film adaptations of television shows such as M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, Breck Eisner's remake of George Romero's classic, The Crazies stands out from the rest.

The plot concerns a small Iowa town where the town sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) begins to notice some residents acting out violently. Soon the army arrives and seals off the town and Olyphant is cut away from his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell) who is mistaken as an infected.

After breaking into the town and rescuing his wife Olyphant, his wife, his deputy, and a nurse from his wife's office must escape the county before they are either killed by the infected or the army.

While the plot may seem a bit standard to other horror films of the present day the plot does have enough suspense and terror to sustain it. The film's acting was very well done, while not excellent it was better than most horror remakes.

In most horror remakes such as The Wolf Man (2010) the actors primarily walk through their roles with no true inspiration, but the cast led by Olyphant does their best and appears to actually care about the roles at hand.

They all have their own personalities and conflicts which allows for them to work outside the broad stereotypes associated with the horror genre(examples-hero, victim, hot female lead). The military appears as cold in their plans and their look.

They are dressed in black and green and always wear their gas masks giving them an unearthly look. Visually the film worked in its set-ups and locales. Their is a sense of isolation and tension in many of the shots within the town and of the weakness felt by the characters.

For instance when the film begins we are treated to a shot of the town's center district in ruins and flames and then we seen a shot only a few days prior showing the unassuming town as it was. Gore-wise the film does not fail, the effects are well done in their execution each spilling a ton of blood of screen.

Fans of other horror films such as the Nightmare series (1984-2010) and Friday the 13th series (1980-2009) will not luck out. Unlike other films like The Wolf Man the gore is not overused or out of place in most scenes.

Despite the better aspects the film does contain its faults. The gore effects which are well done are rather graphic and some viewers may have problems watching it, but gore hounds will love it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Overall for a remake, The Crazies works better than most and is one of the best movies so far this year.