Movie review : The Crazies
I've watched The Crazies a number of times now and it still holds up as an excellent example of a good zombie movie. The pacing starts off slow and builds exponentially. Many zombie movies ramp of the action and scares too quickly, creating an up and down feeling to the pace. Not in this movie. It slowly squeezes tighter and tighter, never letting up.
What I like most about this movie is they rely on good acting and directing to tell the story instead of hoards of zombies. This movie captures the realism of what, I would imagine, a real zombie outbreak would feel like. Seriously, what would happen if a small Midwestern town suddenly came down with zombiecitis? I'd say this is a pretty good depiction of what to expect.
Timothy Olyphant (Justified) and Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black) have great chemistry together. That can only come from a combination of talented acting and good writing/directing. This is what quality movie-making is like. The rest of the cast, especially Joe Anderson, is relatively unknown, even to this day I haven't recalled seeing them again, but they shine, at least once in their careers, in this movie.
They play around with the zombie mythology a bit in this film to make it seem more realistic. You'll see what I mean. And there is a cause for how and why this disease has hit this town. But the movie doesn't waste time on tracking down causes or secret government conspiracies. All of those details are dispensed within about 5 minutes of screen time. Maybe less.
Grade: A
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