So, the first "big" horror film for 2010. It's now the third 2010 movie I've seen. I wanted to see it in theaters last weekend, but decided I wanted to laugh more, and saw Cop Out instead. It's a Romero remake, and I was hoping it was good. It did not disappoint.
First off, if you couldn't figure out it out from previews, it a zombie flick. So we're not treading new ground. Ogden Marsh is a small town in the middle of Iowa. Like any small town sports are a big part of it. So it's a Friday (I assume) and everyone is at the high school baseball game. In the middle of an inning, a man with a shotgun walks on the field. The sheriff, David Dutton and his deputy, Russell Clank (played by Timothy Olyphant and Joe Anderson) get the kids off the field and confront the man. It turns out David thinks he's drunk, cause he used to be an alcoholic but had been dry for two years. He pleads with him to put down the shotgun. The man refuses and then points the gun at David, forcing him to shot him point blank on the baseball field. I'll give ya a hint, he wasn't drunk. The next night, a farmer locks his son and wife in a hall closet, and proceeds to douse the house with gasoline and torch it. When the David and his wife Judy (played by Radha Mitchell) get there, they were informed that the man was mowing his lawn when they got their and the wife and daughter didn't make it out. To end the scene the man started whistling eerily. The next day there were some hunters in the swamp who come across a parachute with a body attached to it. David draws the conclusion that a tip about a plane crash from a guy deemed "usually full of s***", could come in handy so they go to the spot where Mr. Full O'S*** said he heard, what he thought to be, a plane crash and they find it. After that all hell breaks loose, when the people start going nuts, the military comes in an tries to filter to infected from the non-infected. We learn the plane had toxic chemical in it and was on it's way to be destroyed, and that there's a three day incubation period for the virus. David has to save his wife, with his Deputy who gets away and helps him, and it becomes an all out race to get away from the crazy people and the military into safety in what became an apocalyptic wasteland.
First off I wanna give props to the writers for this remake and to the director Breck Eisner. The writing of the remake was good, and without a good vision by the director, this would've done much worse. Now I'm not saying this is a masterpiece, it's not. No new ground is broken in the zombie-horror, but it is quite a good watch. It's not a "She opens the mirror to get some pills. As she closes the mirror, the killer is behind her. *Cue loud music* She screams and fights off the killer." It a subtle horror film, where you see the crazy person in the background when the character doesn't and then the camera pans away from the spot for a second and it's gone. Timothy Olyphant plays the hero detective quite well. He plays David like he knows what he's doing, but not in over the top or extraordinary way. Just a young sheriff who knows the town and wants to help as many people as possible. Radha Mitchell plays Davids wife Judy, and the town doctor well. I liked the fact at throughout the whole movie, she had the desire to save the other people in the town. Most likely nostalgia and doctor instinct, but it added a certain kindness we don't see out of many characters in the horror genre. Also it doesn't hurt to have the pretty girl be smart AND survive the whole movie. The last performance I wanna touch on, is my favorite of the three, it's Joe Anderson playing Deputy Russell Clark. He does it so well, and I think he made the teamwork with David as sheriff work. From stepping in to, literally, save his balls at the morgue. To near the end when he asks to walk with David and Judy for awhile longer and sacrifices himself to let them live were two VERY well shot, and acted scenes on his part. Even to the part where he shoots two of the crazies in the head for good measure. Afterward all he said was "Just had to be sure", and that's what all of these type of movies need, finality and recognition of the kills.
Rotten Tomatoes has this, horror film mind you, at 71% and Megacritic is a little lower at 55%. I'm leaning more towards RT on this one. The acting was way better than it needed to be for a horror film like this, the premise was good, there wasn't a lot of cheap scares, and the directing/cinematography was great. Sure we've seen about a million zombie films in the last 10 years, and most of them are duds. But every once in awhile comes a great one, and this movie was one of them. I liked it more than Cop Out, and Shutter Island. But I'm not giving it a higher rating than Shutter Island. Why? Because Shutter Island was directed, acted and shot brilliantly. Sure, I praised this movie for that and I say it's the best of the year I've seen so far. But, I like to rate on scales based on everything in the movie. So while I LIKED this more, Shutter was done BETTER. After that monologue at the end, bottom line. This is a horror film that worked well, see it.
Rating for The Crazies: 7/10 or 3.5/5 Stars
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