The Crazies

What: The Crazies
Where: Coventry Showcase
Who: Me, Rob, Becky & Wayne
When: Wednesday 3rd March 2010 at 19:15

A film visit suggested by Rob is a new one on me but it was good to get to the cinema with people who you are not used to going with sometimes, the journey was a bit of a pain getting stuck in traffic on the way there risking life and limb edging past a police car onto the M6/M69 roundabout before driving through some of the biggest pot holes ever recorded and later grounding your car on a speed bump and that’s all before you have to get into a Wednesday cinema queue. Note to self always avoid cinemas on a Wednesday unless you are on Orange, although credit must go to the lovely girl signing people up to the showcase insider club.

So what did I think to the Crazies.

Over the years I have sat through a number of zombie films. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed them all there is a lot of undead junk out there if you go looking for it but there is a lot of quality too and a good zombie story can be really effective if done correctly. So when I heard of the Crazies which in essence is a zombie film with no zombies in it. I was pretty intrigued. Unfortunately zombies that have never been dead are a lot less scary than a zombie that has been dead at some point.

When an enormous plane manned by a lone pilot crashes into the middle of a small redneck township and nobody notices (except, in the first of this films many clichés, the town drunk) a lethal toxin is introduced into the towns water supply. This In an unexplained way then starts to turn whoever drinks it into crazies intent on causing pain and suffering on the uninfected. Sounds good? No, really you do surprise me.

This film starts out dull but gets better in the middle, the scene in the carwash is very intense and is one of the few times in the film where you actually feel for the characters in the film. Whilst we are on the subject of this films characters let me just say that this bunch are pretty dull. Nobody really cares who becomes infected and who doesn’t. And if Judy Dutton is pregnant at the beginning of this film as is claimed then she certainly isn’t by the end of it although by the look of her she can be no more than a couple of days gone at the most. I dunno maybe the costume department forgot the bump suit. Anyway I’m rambling.

Now where shall I start with the ending. I’m not going to give anything away but it caused me to smile and just shake my head slowly. Appalling doesn’t even begin to describe the ending of this film and then the sequel tease at the very end causes more fear than the rest of the film put together purely that this film will potentially get a sequal is enough to strike fear in the hearts of any man. Then the credits roll and one of the first names you see is, George A Romero and that is just plain scary.

4/10