Crazies, The
From FilmFile
Taglines:
- Fear Thy Neighbor
- Help Us
- Welcome to Ogden Marsh, the friendliest place on earth
Contents |
Synopsis
Imagine living in a small town where everything is safe and happy...until suddenly it isn't. Imagine your friends and neighbors going quickly and horrifically insane. In a terrifying tale of the "American Dream" gone horribly wrong, four friends find themselves trapped in their hometown in The Crazies, a reinvention of the George Romero classic directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay by Ray Wright (Pulse, Case 39) and Scott Kosar (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
David Dutten (Timothy Olyphant) is sheriff of Ogden Marsh, a picture-perfect American town with happy, law-abiding citizens. But one night, one of them comes to a school baseball game with a loaded shotgun, ready to kill. Another man burns down his own house�after locking his wife and young son in a closet inside. Within days, the town has transformed into a sickening asylum; people who days ago lived quiet, unremarkable lives have now become depraved, blood-thirsty killers, hiding in the darkness with guns and knives. Sheriff Dutten tries to make sense of what's happening as the horrific, nonsensical violence escalates. Something is infecting the citizens of Ogden Marsh with insanity.
Now complete anarchy reigns as one by one the townsfolk succumb to an unknown toxin and turn sadistically violent. In an effort to keep the madness contained, the government uses deadly force to close off all access and won't let anyone in or out... even those uninfected. The few still sane find themselves trapped: Sheriff Dutten; his pregnant wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell); Becca (Danielle Panabaker), an assistant at the medical center; and Russell (Joe Anderson), Dutten's deputy and right-hand man. Forced to band together, an ordinary night becomes a horrifying struggle for survival as they do their best to get out of town alive.
Review
A remake of George Romero's, "Honest, it isn't a zombie film," original, The Crazies sees a small-town infected by something that makes them turn into mindless killers... honest, not zombies! Cue the uninfected few fighting for survival from their neighbours and military out to prevent the contamination from spreading. Can they escape the zomb...erm, infected and survive (running the risk of transmitting the plague to other communities, but why let that get in the way of rooting for them to escape?)
The Crazies is pretty formulaic, and if you find yourself surprised at any point by a plot twist, then you can't have watched many films! That said, it is a good, entertaining, yarn, which ticks all the right boxes... just. The cast are passable, but nothing special. The story is standard. The direction is typical. The scares are signposted. The dry humour is present. The film is simply average from start to finish, not boring you, not dragging, but not giving any reason to watch ever again at the same time. As a simple dose of escapism, it does the trick, and passes the time.
Crazies is not a film I'd go on to recommend to people, but neither is it one I'd tell people to avoid. It is simply one that, should someone say they are off to see it, I'd comment that it is, "Okay!" It's hard to actually comment on what worked in the film and what didn't, as the whole thing is just average.
So, let's just leave it as that. An average horror which isn't a zombie film...much like the original one was.
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