The Crazies (2010) review!

As a toxin begins to turn the residents of Ogden Marsh, Iowa into violent psychopaths, sheriff David Dutton tries to make sense of the situation while his newly pregnant wife, Judy, and two other unaffected townspeople band together in a fight for survival.

There wasn’t anything terribly original about this movie – okay, I know it was a remake anyway, so maybe the original was original at the time, but I did just feel as though I had seen it all before.

The best part of the movie was where the army came in and started to separate people according to their body temperatures; a raised body temperature indicating the person was sick.  Here the wife is taken, as she is pregnant and so has a slightly higher temperature.  This part felt far more realistic to me and therefore more scary. The fear people felt at being separated from their children and partners immediately had me thinking about how I would feel if I were in their place – always a good sign to me that I am getting into the film!

Here the movie stepped up a notch. Some of the parts where Judy is strapped down in the hospital and there is a crazy guy running around impaling people with a pitchfork, literally had me hiding behind my fingers!

The movie was definitely improved by looking into the way the government handle the disaster and not just what happens to the people. In a way it was the government’s treatment of the people that was the crazy thing – not just that the infected went mad. 

I thought it was a bit too lucky that the sheriff and his wife (a doctor) just happened to be among the very few people not infected. I don’t know if I missed something (maybe where their house was meant the water source reached them last – I don’t know), but it did seem like a bit of a lucky coincidence.  There were also some parts, particularly towards the end, that were a little unbelievable.  At one point the couple sit in the huge glass window of a diner, drinking coffee as though it were a regular Sunday morning.  The lights are on and they are in full view of everyone, even though they know the army and the ‘crazies’ are out there – and they wonder why they get found? Duh?

However, overall the movie was fast-paced, violent, and, most importantly, scary!  If you’re looking for a decent weekend movie to rent that will be a good watch, but you won’t need to expend too much brainpower over, then you could do a lot worse than The Crazies!  A decent remake, for once.

Something Wicked 7/10.