The Crazies - Fürchte deinen Nächsten

A transport plane crashes into the water supply of a small Iowa town. Some of the townfolks become infected and turn crazed killers. Sheriff (Timothy Olyphant), his wife (Radha Mitchell), his deputy (Joe Anderson), and a girl from town (Danielle Panabaker) need to escape not only the crazies, but also the military sent to contain the population.

This is remake of a George A. Romero movie. It's not that complicated. It is a horror movie done classically without the jokey references or overt sexualization. There are no gross out jokes or T&A. It is just simple tense horror done right. The scariest scene has to be the women tied down on the gurneys, and a crazy walks in. If you want simple horror, this is all you need.

In Pierce County, Iowa, the Sheriff David (Timothy Olyphant) is forced to kill the local Rory Hamill (Mike Hickman) that is threatening the community in a baseball game with a rifle and an insane behavior. Then his wife Dr. Judy (Radha Mitchell) examines another local, Bill Farnum (Brett Rickaby), who has a strange behavior. In the night, Bill traps his wife and son in the room and then he burns their house to the ground. On the next morning, David and his Deputy Russell Clank (Joe Anderson) are called by three hunters that had found a dead pilot in the Hopman Bog. David and Russell find a big airplane in the bottom of the bog. Sooner the army seals off the town and imprisons the population in tents and concentration camps. David, Russell, Judy and her assistant Becca (Danielle Panabaker) escape and sooner they discover that the plane was airborne with a biological weapon and crashed contaminating the water supply of the population. Further, there is no antidote for the victims that are doomed to die or become incurably mad. The quartet tries to find a breach in the containment to reach the next town, but the escapees are hunted by the army.

I usually hate remakes, but "The Crazies" (2010) is a rare case when the remake is better than the original film of George Romero. The tense plot is slightly different from the original story of 1973 that reflected the paranoia of those years of Cold War. Further, the plot focuses in the personal drama of David and Judy and not in the military action like in the 1973 movie. The screenplay, direction and performances are above average and this film worth watching. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Epidemia" ("The Epidemics")

The Crazies, a remake of a seldom-seen 1972 George Romeo film, is about a small town whose inhabitants drink tainted water and become deranged. The movie is slick but still terrifying, relying not only on wacked-out effects but also on unadulterated suspense to really rattle your nerves.

At a Little League game in Ogden Marsh, Iowa, a man wanders into the outfield carrying a shotgun. When the man raises the weapon, Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) shoots him dead. But the man wasn't drunk, he'd just gone crazy. Dutton investigates further, with the help of his deputy Russell (Joe Anderson), and discovers that a plane carrying a deadly cargo has crashed into a nearby creek, thus poisoning the town's drinking water.

From there, events quickly get out of hand, as anyone who'd drunk water from their taps becomes first listless and unresponsive, then mumbly, then completely unhinged. But that's only the beginning of the nightmare for the town, which is then surrounded by a military force bent on containing the virus by any means necessary.

This is only kind of a zombie film. I mean, no one's dining on the flesh of their living compatriots, there's no shambling, and mindless killing. (There's plenty of killing, but the afflicted people still have the capacity for reason.) One thing I liked about this was that precious time isn't spend trying to discover the reason for everyone's behavior; attention is focused on the survivors and how they react to what's going on. I also appreciated that at no time does anyone, even the sheriff, have this superhuman ability to know what must be done and how to do it. Dutton isn't a superhero, he's a sheriff.

Another thing that helps a lot is the pacing. Too often, things either move so quickly that you can't figure out what's being done to whom or too slowly so that the suspense angle becomes the boredom angle. This is crucial for a horror film, which basically trafficks in suspense. Director Breck Eisner keeps the action coming without holding up the story (e.g., no drawn-out standoffs when it would look implausible), and there are plenty of creeping-up-on-you moments to choke twelve cows.

Olyphant looks a lot like a younger Bill Paxton here, and he's a good fit - Sheriff Dutton is a solid leader, but he's not an improbable one. He's the kind of guy who rises to the occasion, not surpasses it completely. If you're looking for a movie where the hero is always armed to the teeth and subsequently never gets much more than a scratch on him, this isn't for you. Dutton has to constantly fight with his own instincts and change his attitude during the course of the movie (save everyone, save his wife, save a few people, save himself).

People who make horror movies know they're making them for a pretty select audience. Lots of people don't like horror movies at all, and those who do are somewhat picky about them (particularly with so many big-budget ones from which to choose), so standards are high. It's important to grab that core audience, show them something they haven't seen or haven't seen done particularly well, then smack them upside the head. Classic horror films used the horror of the unseen to great effect, and more-recent genre films try the same thing. (One reason for this is that we've become inured to in-your-face slasher films, because the anticipation of the slasher doing his slashing has largely been eroded. But that's a digression right there.

Basically, if zombie movies in general are your bag, you should love The Crazies. (If you don't like any horror films regardless, there's no way you should see this.) The Crazies is effectively scary, mixing human emotions with raw blood and gore and endless edge-of-your seat thrills.

When residents of a small-town begin attacking each other, the survivors are lead away from the area, but when they learn of others still trapped in the town they head back to rescue them before they fall victim to the bloodthirsty creatures.

This was a hard one to get a handle on as there's stuff to love and dislike here. Some of the stuff works, from the build-up in the beginning with the family being stalked in the house before it being set on fire to the gory ambush in the morgue, there's some nice action scenes early on that create a pretty creepy air especially when combined with the investigation angle. The assault on the camp as well as the action in the burned-out ruins of the town are rather nice and certainly big, fun action scenes that provide some nice blood and gore, and it gets a lot of fun out of an abbreviated ambush in a car-wash and a truck- stop encounter, but the fact remains that there's a lot of problems here. The biggest flaw is that the middle segments, after a strong opening, just drain the energy from the film as it continually repeats the tender family relationship that never once feels threatened or in danger, despite attempts to force the issue but it knowingly won't and just renders the whole thing pointless. Also, by dropping the number of encounters down it leaves the relentless pacing of the first half incredibly slowed down and dull afterward, drawing out the film a little too long in this section. Another big serious flaw is the complete and total lack of explanations for the toxin dropped in the town, which is a real mystery on all fronts in how it works, its' purpose and wherever the toxin came from. This is a major flaw which really hampers the film along with its other flaws as otherwise, this is a decent effort.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and children-in-jeopardy.

I give the edge to The Crazies 2010. It was slower pace but had better character and story development . I found the actual (Crazies) to be a lot more menacing in the remake . And the ending of the 2010 film packed a punch