Movie : Crazies

Rating:

Ok, people are running out of ideas and thus making remakes of old movies that were at least a mild success. That’s understandable. And actually sometimes it’s for the better to re-do some cool idea with all the modern technology available and make it more natural, more scary, more … expensive ;p Crazies is a movie from the 70’s and it had it’s moments back then, especially due to all that fear of missiles, war etc. For it’s time it was done pretty well too, but watching it now it’s easy to notice where the effects get cheesy and unconvincing. But hey, it was the 70’s. And the modern day crazies are just as crazy, with all the CGI departments doing their job. While in the 70’s there were no CGI departments at all. Well anyway…

The story is pretty much the same. A military super-top-secret zombify-virus falls down from the sky in a plane crash and poisons the towns water supply. From then on it’s who lives close to the crash turns into a zombie first, so it’s not a mass zombie attack at first. No, it starts slow but picks up the pace when the military guys show up and that’s pretty much when the action starts.
One thing worth mentioning, the zombies are not brainless as they usually are, nor they are slow. Nope, here they’re a mix between a zombie and a human. Still thirsty for blood, killing and aggressive behavior, but at the same time pretty capable of more complex things like operating a gun, a car, and in some cases even talking. That’s a nice twist on the zombies. Yay!
The acting? As good as you could hope for in a movie like this. But seriously it’s not about the acting, it’s more about the plot and the few nicely done moments (like the cafe scenes at the end) plus an idea of a biological weapon is not that unfamiliar now is it ? Saddam supposedly had those too, well there was no proof, but here we have proof that the american army has them. So should someone invade the states? Nah. Why bother, the zombies will suffice. Not a bad movie though. Pretty standard for a horror, but that’s not a bad thing.