The Crazies

You know how much I hate nepotism and would rather mock the rich and the famous than laud them or even give them the faintest of praise. However, I can't deny the obvious (and it is killing me to my core). The spawn of Michael Eisner can direct. He must have made a second deal with the devil.

Timothy Olyphant (that guy who looks like a butcher, meaner Ryan Seacrest) stars as David Dutton - the sheriff of a small, rural Iowa farming town where everyone knows your name (which stinks if you are the town drunk or that guy who had an embarrassing moment involving a goat and funnel cake at the last county fair). Anyway, during the first high school baseball game of the spring, one of the town's residents marches onto the field with a shotgun. Before you know it, some in this Midwestern town are starting to become comatose, while others are becomingly alarmingly and unexplainably violent.

Can David find out what is causing this odd behavior?

Can he protect his friends and family?

While The Crazies is not the most amazing horror movie of the decade, director Breck Eisner knows how to set up a scene, build the tension without a great deal of fanfare mucking up your attention, then scare your underpants off. He picks great moments to get under your skin in minimalist fashion as the audience is focused on a runaway saw, a pitchfork dragging across the ground or the sound of a knife being scraped along the side of a wall.

Yes, we have some gory moments, but Eisner sparingly delivers them, and, usually, does so in a way that fits into the story rather than being exploitive. The Crazies is a movie more about the peril than the blood.

Even Olyphant won me over with his stoic performance. More than ever, he comes off as a strong leading man with a commanding presence on the screen. Much like the rest of the movie, Olyphant isn't delivering some Oscar winning performance, but he brings great intensity and gets you rooting for the good guys in a realistic portrayal that makes David an everyman, instead of some sort of superhero.

Unfortunately, writers Scott Kosar and Ray Wright (based on the original movie by George Romero) abandon the movie's mystery too soon. What makes The Crazies so frightening is the sense of isolation the audience feels as all of this takes place in the middle of nowhere, we wonder what might be causing it, and get the feeling no one in the world can possibly save these people because no one can ever realize this small town exists. However, it becomes more crowded and bigger before it should. This leads to The Crazies becoming more about the chase and less about the creepy factor.

The Crazies is a great surprise in the middle of the hard, long, cold winter.

The Crazies is rated R for bloody violence and language.