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The Crazies (2010) - TerrorScribe - 02-26-2010
[SIZE="5"]The Crazies (2010)[/SIZE]
Rated R
Directed by: Breck Eisner
Written By: Scott Kosar and Ray Wright
Starring
Timothy Olyphant
Radha Mitchell
Joe Anderson
Danielle Panabaker
Running time: 101 minutes
Even during the grayest days of winter, you can still picture it in your head: children playing under a flawless blue sky, a picnic spread out on a checkered blanket, and Old Glory fluttering lazily on the breeze. While weâre at it, go ahead and throw in that whole mental list of things that go along with this. Itâs O.K., I already know youâre thinking about it.
Baseball.
Hot dogs.
Mom.
Apple pie.
Got all that in your head now? Itâs really pretty easy. These images are a part of our collective memory; they are the touchstones of the American Dream. Often, they evoke a sense of happiness, of innocence, of security. Itâs our cultural âhappy place.â
Itâs the place we want to go to get away from it all.
Itâs Ogden Marsh, Anywhere, U.S.A.
And itâs not heaven. Itâs Iowa.
One of our first views of the town is at a baseball game â you can almost smell the popcorn in the air. Itâs all very idyllic⦠at least until a man walks onto the field with a shotgun. Then, we realize that perhaps thereâs something wrong in Ogden Marsh. âThe Craziesâ is the latest in the remake torrent that, in recent months, has slowed to a trickle. Directed by Breck Eisner (âSaharaâ), retells George Romeroâs 1973 genre classic about what happens in a small town when a military biological weapon accidentally falls into their water supply. Eisner tells a tightly-wound and mildly unsettling âwhat-ifâ story and, thanks to a smartly written script by genre veterans, Scott Kosar and Ray Wright, we are dropped into the personal horror of a small group of survivors.
In this group we have the townâs sheriff (played by noted Bill Paxton imitator, Timothy Olyphant), his deputy (Joe Anderson), the sheriffâs wife and town doctor (Rahda Mitchell) and the doctorâs young assistant (Danielle Panabaker). Fans of the original will notice Kosar and Wright take a vastly different tack that focuses less on the morality of the militaryâs actions and more on the plight of the survivors. Fortunately for us, they write the characters that we like and, more importantly, are like us. There are no supermen ass-kickers and there are no shrinking violets. Olyphant â much less Paxton-esque than he was in The Perfect Getaway â hits all the right notes as the brave yet practical Sheriff David Dutton. Mitchell, who is turning into a regular genre staple, handles her character like a champ â more on this later. I canât remember seeing Joe Anderson in anything; obviously his turn in âThe Ruinâ apparently just didnât leave a mark on me. However, as Russell Clank, he is the perfect companion to Olyphantâs Dutton. Panabaker rounds out the very solid foursome and, thankfully, doesnât have a single scream in her dialogue. For that matter, neither does Mitchell. Itâs something that amazes me still that, even in the new millennium, women are still written as victims or vixens, but rarely as humans. It was nice to see both characters written rather intelligently and not just as two-dimensional sex-objects.
The movie itself is visually fun, but like the character, it strikes a happy medium. Only rarely does Eisner really make a mistake with his shots and that is with one particular effect that I felt he used to get a jolt one time too many. Otherwise, he takes us on a journey from one perfect Spring day to a charred aftermath filled with images of broken America.
âThe Craziesâ is a nice suspenseful ride through the American psyche starting in our collective hopes and leading down to our little spoken of fears. For a horror movie, thereâs plenty of tension and thrills but not a lot in the way of gore (and personally Iâm a little disappointed that the originalâs signature âknitting needleâ kill wasnât included).
This movie isnât for everyone, though, as demonstrated by our beloved editor, His Eminence, the right honorable Devin Pike, who said he would have rather regurgitated a live adult yak than watch âThe Crazies.â Itâs true. I heard him say it. I have witnesses. Mark Walters was there.
And the Queen of Melanesia.
What?
http://www.redcarpetcrash.com/2010/02/26/review-the-crazies/
The Crazies (2010) - FreddysFingers - 02-27-2010
I agree with you TerrorScribe, the movie isn't for anybody but I thought it was a fun little horror movie. Average but still fun.
Full review here: http://www.paradiseofhorror.com/2010/02/review-crazies-2010.html
The Crazies (2010) - Bojangles - 02-27-2010
I want to see this.
The Crazies (2010) - TerrorScribe - 02-27-2010
FreddysFingers Wrote:I agree with you TerrorScribe, the movie isn't for anybody but I thought it was a fun little horror movie. Average but still fun.
Full review here: http://www.paradiseofhorror.com/2010/02/review-crazies-2010.html
That line was mainly a friendly jab at my editor who truly HATED the movie. But, in retrospect, it's really a true statement because it is such a mainstream horror movie that true horror buff might find this a little bland and boring. Still, it's head and shoulders above the original and great for someone who might not ordinarily like horror movies.
The Crazies (2010) - FreddysFingers - 02-27-2010
Oh I agree. Although I am one to admit that I haven't seen the original.
The Crazies (2010) - TerrorScribe - 02-28-2010
I watched the original the morning of the screening and again the next day. Let's just say it's... dated.
The Crazies (2010) - Bojangles - 02-28-2010
The original was pretty cool, in my opinion.
The Crazies (2010) - Friday The 13th - 03-01-2010
Bojangles Wrote:The original was pretty cool, in my opinion.
It really was
The Crazies (2010) - FreddysFingers - 03-01-2010
I need to watch the original one.