The Crazies
This remake of the ’70s Romero film- a horror remake? how novel!- builds up slowly, and graduates in tension in a way that is many times unbearable. The closest original horror film to do this of late is “Cloverfield,” which succeeded precisely for the same reasons this film does.
I enjoy movies like this. Movies like “Predator,” “Cloverfield,” and “Alien” hit something primal and frightening within me. It’s the classic idea of a boogie man that’ll come out of the dark and kill you at its’ best. Hunter vs. hunted. “The Happening” tried to do this idea a couple of years back, and sometimes succeeded, but mostly didn’t.
“The Crazies” does it better. It starts with a man holding a shotgun interrupting the first baseball game of the year in a small Iowa town. The sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) is forced to shoot him. The man has a history of alcoholism, but his BAL comes back sober. Eventually other people start behaving the same way, and this small town (population 1260) starts to shrink in size.
Director Breck Eisner keeps the character development quick and only as needed, which is fine because the real juice comes from the impossibility of getting out of this situation for our main characters. The actors do a good job keeping our interest in these character’s lives even if it’s not gonna be anyone’s best work. The story does the rest of the heavy loading, and frankly, I couldn’t get enough of it, although did we really need the downbeat ending?
