The Recent Remake of "The Crazies"

"The Crazies" is originally a film by George Romero, and his prints are still all over this remake. But I guess I'll address that in a moment. Let me first say that this movie is NOT genius, and I am biased towards it for a variety of reasons.

For one, I really like zombie-like movies, meaning movies that pit humanity against a slowly advancing plague of horrificness, revealing the real grit underneath the veneer of civilization and the real nuts and bolts of people and society. This is in no way a great example of zombie film, but it is a movie that borrows a lot from that way of making films.

The faults of this movie, in fact, are mostly caused by the fact that it really isn't a zombie movie. The enemies in this film are somewhat sophisticated, making battles against them and flight from them feel more like a war movie than like a creeping horror movie.

And I guess that is no accident. This movie is maybe most accurately classed as a military horror story. That's not only because of the fact that the McGuffin in this movie is related to the military and their presumed power over the citizenry. It also has a lot to do with how the film structures its drama. The most high-tension points feel half cribbed from military films and half cribbed from zombie movies.

Which is cool, but it also leads to the whole venture feeling slightly disjointed and not as important or coherent as it could be. It still has some really great tense moments, some really beautiful desolation scenery (recalling "The Road" and "The Book of Eli"), and some really fantastic music. But it all ends up being only worth the time spent watching it, no more. (Come to think of it, a lot like those two other films.)

As far as Romero is concerned, the movie sticks to its Romero-esque guns by having an ending that isn't neatly wrapped up and reeks of the downfall of all of humanity. The movie sort of chickens out, though, which makes it feel a little less gut-wrenching than any of Romero's work, even his weakest efforts.

All told, it's a solid film, with a lot to offer a viewer, but not a lot to offer cinema or even the zombie-like-apocalypse genre. Fun, but not important, and obviously trying for, and falling short of, important in some respects. 5 stars? These middle-of-the-road, only-ok movies are hard to rate.