I suppose I can’t fault “The Crazies” for delivering exactly what it promised: Screaming victims, bloody deaths, scary things hiding in the dark, and, of course, crazy people. But there really isn’t anything new here. It’s a remake of the 1973 film directed by George A. Romero, which itself has similarities to his own “Night of the Living Dead” and would go on to inspire its apocalyptic sequels, also directed by Romero (some of which have already been remade, and you’ll forgive me if I’m belaboring the point). It’s a typical zombie story set in a typical Middle American farming community inhabited by typical white-bred people, some of whom are given that distinctive Southern drawl for maximum effect. This definitely includes the trigger-happy rednecks that shoot at zombies for no reason other than the sheer joy of it.
 
The town is Ogden Marsh, Iowa. Population: 1,260. It’s one of those places where the people earn a living and life is simple. In due time, things start to go wrong. Some of the residents act ... funny. At first, it doesn’t seem so bad; they space out pretty easily, and maybe they’ll repeat something they just said a second earlier. But then, for no apparent reason, they begin to bleed all over, and what’s worse, they become homicidal maniacs. What’s causing this epidemic of insanity? The local sheriff, David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) and his deputy, Russell Clank (Joe Anderson), have reason to believe that the local water supply is to blame. Maybe it has been contaminated with an unknown toxin.
 
Before long, the military gets involved. Well armed and merciless, the soldiers are not too far off from the zombies they’re trying to quarantine – they’re violent, single-minded, and anonymous, their faces obscured by dark gas masks while they relentlessly follow someone else’s orders via walkie-talkies. The remaining residents of Ogden Marsh are rounded up and taken to a makeshift medical ward, where people are forcefully separated on the basis of whether or not someone has an elevated temperature. Sheriff Dutton’s wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell), falls into the second category, and she’s taken away despite Dutton’s assertion that she’s pregnant and prone to slight fevers. She soon finds herself strapped to a stretcher in an area designated for the already infected. Unfortunately, an attempted jailbreak results in some of the crazies escaping, and one of them is headed straight for Judy, a bloody pitchfork dragging behind him.

It soon becomes a matter of survival, David, Judy, Russell, and a teenager named Becca (Danielle Panabaker) pitted against an illness and a brutal military presence. Can they escape Ogden Marsh? Will they become infected? Will they be shot dead before they have the chance to become infected? And what is the secret of this plague? Where did it come from? How did it come to be there? The answers to all of the above are given, but I seriously doubt you’ll find any of them surprising.
 
Still, if you haven’t yet grown tired of the zombie genre, then chances are “The Crazies” will not disappoint you. Indeed, it’s a striking visual achievement, some of the most frightening scenes taking place in cramped, shadowy spaces. I also give the filmmakers credit for creating gore effects that aren’t relentlessly campy. There’s a sequence, for example, in which a crazed mortician starts wielding a working bone saw; I expected a retread of the morgue sequence from “Re-Animator,” but instead, I got a dark and fairly unnerving moment of bloody violence. Another sequence, this one involving a crazy and a can of gasoline, is surprisingly chilling and not at all a cheap gimmick that plays for laughs.
 
It’s simply a matter of having seen so many movies like this before. Everything from Romero’s films to “28 Days Later” to “Doomsday” to “Quarantine” to the “Resident Evil” trilogy have told more or less the exact same story to varying degrees of success. Quite frankly, it’s starting to get old.
 
The final thirty minutes of “The Crazies” are problematic in that every scene feels like the finale; a resolution is overshadowed by another crisis, which is then resolved before leading to another crisis, etc., etc. More than once I was ready to get out of my seat and leave the theater, and more than once I was hit with a new turn of events. How many twists does one movie need? And why should they be allowed to spill over into the end credits, at which point it becomes overkill? I guess horror audiences have come to expect nothing less. I can’t say that I hated or even disliked “The Crazies,” for it succeeds at being exactly what it wanted to be. Maybe, somewhere deep down, I was hoping it would surpass my expectations. There are few things more satisfying than a film that delivers more than it promises.

- Chris Pandolfi

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