The Crazies

I hate horror flicks. With extremely rare exception, this is the most mind numbingly awful genre of film for me to have to sit through. I feel some pressure to watch them because they are popular and my job dictates I be knowledgeable about upcoming movies. In the last 30 years, I can think of maybe 10 I actually enjoyed. The Crazies is not one of them.

Timmy Olyphant plays small town Sherriff David Dutton, a man who loves his wife, his coffee, and reminding his deputy who the fuck is in charge. Seriously, there are about 5 or 6 different occasions in this movie where he feels the need to remind the guy that HE is the boss and to follow the chain of command. You’d think the Deputy was some raging asshole with a disdain for authority. You would be wrong (see where making assumptions gets you?), for Deputy Clank (played by Joe Anderson) is so loyal and obedient you start checking to see if his tail is wagging..

Weird shit starts going down in Ogden Marsh, Iowa (population 1286). Some might say crazy shit. During a ball game, the town drunk – whose name escapes me, as does the actor who plays him – decides to take a leisurely stroll through centre field with a shot gun. Dutton takes him down because HE’S the mofo in charge, you see. And that’s what the mofo in charge does. Gradually, more uninteresting people start acting crazy and then the reason why horror movies are stupid reveals itself.

You see, the reason why people are going batshit insane is because a very large plane crashed in a very small marsh in this very small town and only one person noticed. We do not get the privilege of meeting this super genius, we just know that he is full of shit. Now, there is absolutely no evidence of a very large plane crashing in a very small marsh except for the vague outline of a perfectly intact jumbo jet submerged just below the surface.

Now the theory is that the plane is leaking some kind of toxin into the water supply. Because of course, Ogden Marsh gets their town drinking water from an actual marsh. And they further theorize that Sherriff and his boy can’t have this crazy making toxin because they live so far away and the toxin would reach them last. Even though Sherriff has a cup of coffee in his hand through pretty much 60% of the movie (main ingredient in a cup of coffee is ... anyone? WATER), my guess is that water for his coffee must have been flown in from Fiji.

All hell starts breaking loose, black SUVs show up and of course, the military. Because, naturally, that was a military plane carrying a biological agent you see. That’s how it was able to crash silently, with minimal water displacement or environmental disturbance in a small town’s water supply. Therefore, it must have been a stealth jumbo jet. It even crashes stealthily. People get rounded up, shot and burned. The Sherriff is outraged because the US military doesn’t want to listen to a coffee swilling small town law enforcement official that may have been contaminated by a biological agent that makes you murderous and insane. Go figure.

The more the movie tries to explain itself, the more infuriating and ridiculous it gets. An essential plot detail left out of this whole thing is that the Sherriff and his wife (played by horror movie maven Radha Mitchell) are robots. They have to be. They drink lots of water but don’t get infected. When it supposedly goes airborne, they don’t stop breathing, but also don’t get infected. When the Sherriff pulls a knife out of a zombie’s neck, through his hand and introduces the infection DIRECTLY INTO HIS BLOOD, nope, no infection. When his wife is hiding in a pile of dead infected zombies, and she’s covered in cuts, she’s fine. BALLS.

The movie is creepy if you turn your brain completely off. But if you pay the slightest attention to the story at all, your head will explode.

I rate the Crazies 2 out of 10