3.5 stars. Good, honest thrills from this modest but effective film.
THE CRAZIES is not a great film, nor will it likely even enter the "Hall Of Fame" of zombie-type movies. However, it is a tight, well-constructed and reasonably well-acted thriller that is more than worthy of a look.
In the small mid-western town of Ogden's Marsh, high school baseball season is just getting started. Everyone in town is there to size up the quality of this year's team...and frankly, life just couldn't get any finer. In less than 2 minutes, we get learn all we need to know about this little town...we see that it's a town where everyone knows everyone. Everyone has a place and is contented. Life is simple but satisfying. But when a glassy-eyed farmer with a shotgun wanders onto the field of play (actually, he has what might be described as a zombie-like stare), the sheriff (played at a perfect pitch by Timothy Olyphant) tried to talk him out of his weapon. Their brief, tense confrontation ends in the death of the farmer...and the town is rattled...
Superior survival horror
I knew nothing about The Crazies going into the theater. I didn't know it was originally produced by the father of the zombie genre, George Romero. And I didn't expect to see a movie about a sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell) with my own wife six months pregnant. Please note: this review contains spoilers.
The movie starts out slowly. In these stressful times, we're all too familiar with scenes of sudden gun violence in an idyllic setting. After sheriff Dutton is forced to gun down a former town drunk on a little league field, the town of Ogden Marsh begins to unravel. Everybody knows everybody else in this small town and a murder leaves emotional aftershocks that traumatize its citizens. This includes Dutton's wife, who happens to be the town doctor.
The tension slowly notches up from there. These early moments are critical in establishing The Crazies as a superior horror film. The petty rivalries, the secret and not-so-secret...
The Crazies is a very scary thrillride re-make
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