The remake of an almost-but-not-quite zombie movie is nothing spectacular, but certainly lives up to expectations for a slightly above average horror film. Breck Eisnerís ìThe Crazies,” pulling a 72 percent at Rotten Tomatoes, delivers all the things you would expect from your run-of-the-mill suspense flick. Some of the earlier kills in the movie were fairly tame by todayís gory movie standards óthe use of the pitch fork you see on the poster is about as graphic as it gets. Still, it will definitely be a good while before Iím ready to use a drive-through car wash again.
ìThe Crazies” is set in small town Iowa, following the local Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant), his wife Dr. Judy Dutton (Rhada Mitchell), Deputy Sheriff Russell Clank (Joe Anderson) and an assortment of classic small town characters as members of the community start going insane and killing people.† Some detective work on the part of Dutton reveals the source of the problem to be water supply contamination, but it is too late, as the military has already begun a ìcontainment protocol.” The townspeople are rounded up for quarantine, and the story quickly pits our heroes against both insane killers and a military force in their attempt to escape the doomed town.
The tone is very well set through shot construction, music and all the other ingredients that go into the creation of suspense, but it gets to be pretty formulaic. The classic reveal of cutting back and forth to a shot, showing a crazy behind the constantly victimized wife of the protagonist happens just one too many times, and you can almost always tell when someone is about to ìsave the day.”
The most redeeming quality of the movie was the interplay between the level-headed Sheriff Dutton and the head-strong but loyal Deputy Russell, due to both the writing of their relationship and Olyphant and Andersonís performance. Dutton seemed the exemplary leader to have in anything resembling a zombie apocalypse, and, despite her tendency to let crazies sneak up on her, his wife was just a little bit more than a damsel in distress.† Russell may seem like a liability at some points, but in the end he pulls through in something that resembles a believable and not entirely obvious way.
From the middle to the end, it was pretty good at keeping me guessing which one of our heroes was going to get killed off next, but the fact that I was watching it as a guessing game instead of thrilling to every twist speaks to how closely Eisner stuck to formula for this one. This doesnít make ìThe Crazies” a bad movie, just a predictable one.