So Matt, our friend Mike and myself went and saw ‘The Crazies’ this weekend.  Mike and I are huge horror movie fans, Matt not quite as much.  All three of us really enjoyed this movie, in keeping with our tastes, Mike and I more than Matt.

That actually says a lot about this movie.  It is a great horror movie.  That’s key, a great HORROR movie.  This isn’t the movie that is going to be a game-changer for the genre.  It doesn’t do anything different than what you’ve seen before in most other horror movies.  The main difference between this and a lot of other horror movies, this does those things well.  There are the jump scares, people not always doing things that make sense, unbelievable escapes from death, etc, etc.  What I liked about ‘The Crazies’ was I liked how they accomplished all of these things.

The characters in the movie, while they don’t have a lot of character development, are nicely fleshed out three-dimensional people.  They never feel like the usual crop of screaming idiots that populates most horror flicks these days.  They have some real emotion to them and I was genuinely rooting for them to survive.  The acting was pretty great across the board.  Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell and Joe Anderson round out the main cast and all of them are pretty damn fantastic.  I really loved Joe Anderson’s Russell Clank.  Russell is the deputy of Ogden Marsh who doesn’t seem to have anyone to care about in the town except for Sheriff Dutton.  It truly is a bromance for the ages.

As far as the story goes I don’t want to give too much away, but it is pretty straight forward.  Something in the small town of Ogden Marsh is causing the residents to go, well, crazy.  They start repeating themselves, bleeding and ultimately balls to the wall crazy and start murdering everyone in sight.  That’s where the movie really shines.  The death scenes are very creative and gory.  A nice combination.  Extra points for the knife scene.  I’m not going to say what happens, you’ll know when you see it.

My final thoughts on this movie are it is definitely worth seeing, especially if you are a fan of the genre.  Although this isn’t going to be the movie that changes all of our perceptions on what a horror movie is, it is a solid thrill ride with a few weak points here and there but that makes up for it where it counts.   Recently we have instituted a rating system, 0 – 100%, so here we go:

85% – Though not perfect, definitely worth a shot

See you on the other side – Derek