The Crazies Review (2010) Worth Watching?

It's about a small town whose residents start going bat shit crazy, one by one by one.

The Crazies was directed by Breck Eisner and stars Timothy Olyphant (from Dreamcatcher), Radha Mitchel (from The Darkness and Sacrifice) and Joe Anderson (from Abattoir and Horns).

Fear Thy Neighbor

This is the second time I've watched The Crazies and have to say it ranks among my favorite remakes of all time. I put it up there with Evil Dead and The Hills Have Eyes. The original Crazies from 1973 was OK, it had more of a sci-fi vibe and focused very heavily on the military. Civil war drums looped in the background for most of the runtime. The contrast between the original and this remake was like night and day, it took the concept and improved upon it in so many ways. The Crazies isn't just one of my favorite remakes of all time, it's also one of my favorite casual horrors of all time alongside other gems like Joy Ride and Book of Shadows (say what you will, but it's a damn good sequel).

I consider The Crazies a casual horror because it doesn't do anything especially unique, it just takes a proven concept (in this case zombies) and gives us an especially good version of it. This version uses a military biological weapon as the virus. A cargo plane transporting the bio weapon crashes into a river which happens to supply a small farming town with water. Drink the water, go crazy, kill your neighbors. It's brilliant in its simplicity.

The Crazies may be a somewhat familiar zombie style dystopian survival story, but it's one with a twist. Sure, there's a small group of people fighting to survive an overwhelming threat in a small town (aka every Stephen King movie ever) but it's done so with some unexpectedly epic kill scenes. There's 5 crazy scenes in particular that really grabbed me:

1. The Baseball field scene. This is one of the first scenes in the movie and really grabs you by the face from the get go. The way it combines small town Americana with trauma is memorable to say the least.

2. The legendary pick fork scene. If you haven't seen it, you have to see it. It's brutal AF.

3. The medical examiner saw scene, creative and intense!

4. The knife through the hand neck stab scene.

5. The car wash scene. Such a great location for a horror scene. Imagine being trapped in a car that's being moved against your will while brushes and foam block your view. Everything's moving, it's noisy and both the front and back of your car are completely vulnerable. The Final Destination (part 4) tried the car wash scene a year prior, but The Crazies perfected it.