The Crazies (2010)

I know I'm saying this too often, but this time I really have an acute seizure of the general chronic time crisis, so I don't know how much I'll be on topic in what's next because I don't have many minutes allocated for writing. I've chosen a horror for this week, because (with the exception of the last preview series) it's been a while I think since my last entry on the genre. "The Crazies" is a remake after a movie made by George Romero quite a long time ago. In case the name doesn't sound familiar it's about the creator of the "of the Dead" series, started in the '60s and which got up to 5-6 movies I believe until today. In case "of the Dead" doesn't ring a bell neither, it's about, I don't know if the initiation but practically the series that imposed the "zombie horror" as a genre. The first three movie, if I'm not wrong about the number are significant for this segment, the level being far superior to many other cheaper imitations. The last of the series went a bit too much to the commercial side in my point of view (+ it seems that Romero doesn't have anymore such better script ideas as he had when he was younger).

Well, getting back to "The Crazies", this is not part of the mentioned "of the Dead" series, but it can be include pretty much in the same horror genre. Instead of zombies we have a virus that apparently starts with increasing the irascibility of the carrier, goes on with dementia, and finally death ( definitive = no zombies, by definition :) ). Well, the story starts with the classic out of control military weapon plot resulting in the effects mentioned above taking place in a small town. Of course followed by the same army that tries to quarantine the area (more or less forever) and all the things we've seen quite a lot in other movies. What's catchy (at least for me) in all this stuff is the way the diverse characters and subplots are integrated in a context that has been overused since Romero's first movie (if not before). And of course I won't give any more details about this :) because spoils all the fun.

For me categorizing this type of movie as horror, in the case of the productions that really prove themselves to worth seeing, is purely commercial. For this side you have some amounts of spilled blood that should attract also the population wishing to see red screens, but in the same genre you have also much lighter movies considering this like Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13" ( or "They Live" also by Carpenter, although I don't know how light is that :) ). So, leaving apart the horror as a genre, and thinking on the crisis situation context where you have a hand of protagonists as said also above, you get a catastrophe movie (as in "2012"), or a drama (as in "Hotel Rwanda" - to be excused the comparison, but I really can't think on anything else right now), or both. The script (once again, talking about a movie that it's above a certain level) gets the possibility to exploit a bunch of aspects in the context it's placed, from character conflicts up to psychological analysis masked by the action (to think of the utopia/fantasy of having a mall at your own disposal ... started by "Dawn of the Dead" and used in lots of other places, including the current title). That's the part that really makes a movie of this genre worth seeing. I couldn't say about "The Crazies" that gets to the same level with the most complex titles with respect to this. The action is predominant, but is not cheap, is not exaggerated (considering it's still a horror), it makes the movie watchable, but still letting some space for small reflections :) Slightly subjective ...

Rating: 4 out of 5