The Crazies (Breck Eisner, 2010)

I'm into Crossed comics lately and decided to check out this one not expecting much to be honest. Or better say - expecting just another of Romero's rip-offs that even he himself has started doing anyways...

But it is surprisingly good. We are not in the near "when there's no room in hell the dead will walk the earth" future but in the present time. And instead of zombies we have crazies which are locals in a small town who became infected by some government fucked up chemical poison. They are called crazies for obvious reasons (although they are not as insane as crossed ones) but mayhem really starts when army arrives into this town and starts "cleansing" it. In the middle of all this is local sheriff (of course), his pregnant wife (at least there's no small kid) and his friend/deputy.

Sounds like a pretty much standard setup, but it manages to raise above average. Total winner is the scene with farmer impaling tied-up women in the hospital with pitchfork (also good poster btw). It's truly unsettling and horrifying to watch and I'm surprised movie got just a R15 rating. Another good scene is fight between two crazies and our hero in his house. Trick with killing someone with a knife drilled through the hand is not a new one but it's really effective here.

Story is also pretty cool and fast moving. It doesn't waste much time with introductions and family shit and so on. Bad things start happening pretty fast and after that our group is constantly on the run, getting (and loosing) some members along the way. For the first half of the flick it bothered me that they don't have some plan, but I soon realized that's the whole point of it.

Good mixture of horror, action and suspense with even some darkly comical elements thrown in. And one last spoiler - it does end up with a big bang! So I'm awarding it with an extra point that it probably doesn't really deserve.

8/10