By Amanda Serrano / Staff Writer
By Amanda Serrano / Staff Writer
This movie definitely drove me crazy and not in a good way; with a generic plot and B list actors, this film was anything but original.
In a small town somewhere unimportant in Iowa people are suddenly going, wait for it, wait for it; yes you guessed it, crazy. The old saying, “there must be something in the water” is taken literally in this predictable story line.
The town sheriff played by actor Timothy Olyphant (“A Perfect Get Away”) and his deputy played by Joe Anderson (“Across the Universe”) seem to be the only people in the beginning, to question what’s going on in their quiet farmland community.
When it’s discovered that the town’s water supply is tainted with a rare virus, the remaining sane citizens try to figure out what can be done to help the rest of “crazy town”. Not surprisingly, the government arrives to quarantine the town in order to contain the mysterious virus. The government places the townsfolk in separate camps, separating the infected from the uninfected. In this separation process, the sheriff’s pregnant wife, played by Radha Mitchell (“Surrogates”) is placed in the wrong camp.
Alas, the sheriff saves his wife along with her young receptionist, from the infected camp just in the nick of time; surprise, surprise. They journey through their escape together along with the sheriff’s deputy and run into predictable circumstances along the way.
It appears as though the new scary movie fad is to have some sort of epidemic which causes people to either act like their crazy or a zombie. There seems to be no originality when it comes to scary movie making anymore.
Fans of scary movies that could care less about originality, decent acting, or predictable twists would give “The Crazies” two thumbs up, but for those fans that do care; they may want to think twice before choosing this film as their next movie going experience.
Director Breck Eisner (“Sahara”) shot this film in predictable low lighting and suspenseful close-up shots which any beginning director would use for a scary movie. It’s possible other directors would shoot this film the same way though due to the familiar storyline.
Throughout the film there were maybe one or two suspenseful surprises, but I still found them to be created poorly. The audience did however seem to be impressed by the bloody effects which can honestly be found in most suspense films today.
If you are impressed with generic plot twists and a predictable ending, odds are you will think this is the best film ever made.
To make it even worse, the film gives audiences an ending which would make one think there may be a sequel. If the creator of this film has any compassion for movie goers, he will not make a sequel as it seems in would only be a duplicate of this unoriginal movie.
