The sound of fingernails on a chalk board used to give me the chills. I used to fear that a zombie apocalypse was inevitable. I felt confident that I would be able to see any calamity coming, and avoid it with my wits and plenty of planning.
The finger nails on the chalk board were thus my biggest fear in life. The uncomfortable, sometimes nauseating sound they propelled with great speed was completely out of my hands. If any half-wit desired to get under my skin, there was nothing I could do to avoid it. It is this inevitability that is only found in horror movies which is able to stir me with such capability.
Horror movies are a personal favorite of mine. I like the way they build up suspense and unleash it with the timing which seems so reckless, but you know deep down is actually very calculated. I love the way they have evolved from eighties slasher flicks which cut away at the best moments, leaving the viewer with nothing but a shadow of the soon to be deceased member of the story, and the ruthless killer, to what they are today, some of the most unforgiving moments of cinematic adventure one can bear to witness. The question in horror movies has switched from asking "when can we show gore?" to "when should we avoid gore?".
It seems that Romero's films have garnished a great deal of relevancy in the past few years. The public is craving his psychotic mix of gore and public critique.
After seeing a remake of a Romero classic last night, this fear of fingernails meeting blackboard has been replaced.
My new fear is the omnipresence of neighbors slowly turning into homicidal maniacs. This fear is triggered by the sound of a pitchfork dragging across a tile floor. A hunting knife scraping slowly, unceasingly, along a bare concrete wall, leaving a trail of still warm blood. That is the difference between a traditional zombie movie and "The Crazies". Zombies don't creep around in the background, waiting with weapons and their malicious intent. A zombie is unaware that it is a zombie. In the crazies, the people are still people, only they have been transformed into maniacs with one goal in mind. Killing everyone.
"The Crazies" centers around a small community in the southern United States who find themselves falling victim to a spill of chemicals into their modest water supply. Slowly, but surely, the virus spreads through the community. There is nothing slow, however, about the pace which the townsfolk are dying. One amazing thing about this film is the variety of ways the "infected" and uninfected meet their end. There is no end to the forms of tortuous deaths which appear in the crazies; whether it is the traditional gunshot, the highly effective bone saw, or the timeless act of arson, death is something which does not get old in this film. The film does maintain the classic aspects of any Romero film such as the failed involvement of the military, the ability of a small town to rise up (sometimes more literally felt in Romero's zombie films) and the sappy ending. The only thing different about the ending of the crazies, and perhaps we should blame the director or the studio's desire to produce a sequel, is the romantic walk into the sunset, only the viewer is savvy to the spread of the virus and the future plans of quarantine.
All in all, the crazies is a fantastic movie. If you're looking for a mystery with plenty of plot twists, you will be disappointed. If you're looking for a romantic movie starring the next Hollywood heartthrobs, you will likely end up puking in the theatre. And finally, if you are looking to learn anything aside from how to survive an apocalyptic situation, you will leave and most likely request your money back.
Long live Romero.
Declan
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