Miscellanous Outworlder Reviews

I'm Not Okay, I Promise

The Crazies
directed by Breck Eisner
posted by Kattastrophe

 


The problem with zombie movies is that zombies really only have one motivation—to eat. It’s scary, yeah, but it it’s not terrifying. People are far more terrifying than zombies. People have so many wants. They react to things. Zombies… well, they just GO.

The rules of society keep most people in line. They keep people from doing awful things to one another. Our brain tells us that no matter how much we want to hurt someone, it’s not okay. We’ll get arrested, we’ll be ostracized. The payoff doesn’t justify the price.

In the town of Ogden Marsh, something’s gone wrong. A virus spreads through the town, causing everyone to ditch their societal restraints.

So, The Crazies shares a lot with a typical zombie movie, besides being a remake of a Romero flick by the same name. The main characters are trapped in a town by military forces. They’re being chased by bloody psychotics that want nothing more than to tear them apart. The big difference is that these psychotics are doing it because they want to. A group of hunters declares it open season on humans. A man kills his family because they keep him tied down. A woman seeks revenge on the man that shot her husband. None of these “crazies” are doing anything that’s really random and that’s only part of the horror of this movie.

Can you tell the difference between a virus that makes you aggressive and a person who is at their wits end? Can you tell the difference between a person running toward you in desperation and a person running toward you to kill you? Are you going crazy because you’re sick? Or are you going crazy because everyone you know is dead or trying to kill you?

That’s the truly terrifying part of the movie.

Unfortunately, it suffers from an unlikely plot point. Where was the military when the whole fiasco could have been stopped. They knew what was going to happen, but that just sat around and watched? I call shenanigans on that. I would have given this movie a 4, but the end of it pulls the Glooms down to 3. I can’t say much more without spoiling it, so you’ll have to click that spoilers link to see it.

Gaming Inspiration
Honestly, I’ve been running a game just like this. Small town, everyone goes crazy. But in mine, it’s a demony-type thing.

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