The Crazies

The acting ranges from mediocre to Wiseauian. The editing is more frenetic than a kindergartner on angel dust. The narrative is disjointed in the way a building is disjointed when it’s blown up with dynamite. The score is almost entirely a military percussion, which makes me long for sudden onset deafness. Dialogue is often screamed or muffled, so it’s hard to make out what everybody is saying, but there’s no point because there’s only two stories going on: the military screwing up a quarantine, and people trying to get out of it. It has no resolution whatsoever, just limping to a whimpering, hopeless stop. But perhaps worst of all is that the movie’s premise makes a promise it never intends to fulfill. The idea of this biological agent being loosed in a small town that turns people into raving, murderous lunatics sounds great. City-wide carnage, infected rural sociopaths versus a disorganized military unit is fertile ground for an entertaining movie, and you get nothing close to that. There’s a scene or two that I guess could be townspeople going nuts, but it just looks like armed resistance. And the occasions where main characters get infected, they’re just a little loopy. So, a broken promise on top of a movie that is sloppily edited, poorly acted, irritatingly scored, and narratively fractured! Hard to believe this is from the same man who directed the taut, intelligent, and effective Dead series. Watch one of those over this. Watch most anything over this.