Crazy Town

I'm not a big horror movie fan.

Just putting that out there, letting you all know where I stand. For me, most horror is low-budget, poorly directed, and in it more for the gore factor rather than being a smart film that actually makes the audience think. If you're George Romero, you could make a non-mainstream, thought provoking horror film with your eyes closed, but most horror directors seem to not care so much about putting out quality product. Of course, there are exceptions, but for every Evil Dead or Dawn of the Dead are seemingly hundreds of titles similar to Open Graves. Now, this doesn't mean I write off horror as an inferior genre, but it usually means I don't often have a good first impression of horror films due out.

Maybe something's changed in me, but when I first saw the trailer for The Crazies, a remake of the original Romero film by director Breck Eisner, I was very excited. Here was a film that, from it's trailer, seemed to be smart, scary and most importantly sincere, which is a difficult trick to pull off when you're putting your characters in situations in which most of us may never find ourselves. My biggest concern was whether or not this film could live up to the amazing trailer, but I was confident enough to grab a rental and give the movie my time.

"And that's why you shouldn't play with matches."

The Crazies drops us in the small town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa. Ogden Marsh is one of those idyllic small towns where (sing it with me here) everybody knows you're naaaaame...

Ahem.

Let's move on.

Anyway, this town is also the kind of place where high school baseball is the talk of the town, and that's where all of Ogden Marsh, including the young local sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant), is when everything starts to go down the toilet. One of the locals gets it in his head that it's a good idea to carry a shotgun onto the field of play, and after a tense standoff, David is forced to shoot the man dead. But while your local newspaper might report that story like it's the end, this only proves to be the beginning of a small town's descent into madness, sickness, and murder.

It's a zombie! No, wait, it's not?? Awwwwww.....

One of the first things you notice about this film is how well the story is paced. There's no rush to force haphazard plot points onto you, as the movie calmly introduces you to characters, slowly feeding the story in a reasonable manner as to facilitate the audience's understanding. And these characters are all well thought-out people, not just soundbites or cliches. You learn to care about them, and when they get sick and change, that feeling sticks with you. This is immensely helped by the strong acting of not only the key performers, but many of the supporting cast. The only thing I've seen Olyphant was his small role in Scream 2, so that pretty much meant he was an unknown quantity for me. So how was I to know he'd be absolutely wonderful as the mild-mannered sheriff who is determined to lead he and his wife out of the madness that has consumed their town? Also strong is Radha Mitchell in what might be one of her better performances as David's wife and the town doctor who witnesses some of the early symptoms of the illness before it gets completely out of control. But the best performance of the cast might be British actor Joe Anderson as the Sheriff's deputy, who may or may not be infected over the course of the film. He's the kind of everyman you want to root for, even when it begins to become obvious that he's turning. And these are the main roles, not the great small roles by Brett Rickaby, Larry Cedar and Mike Hickman as characters who completely get into their performances in this sick community.

I don't think that new sitter is going to work out.

The movie is truly scary, blending just the right type of atmosphere with proper pacing and believable characters and making you believe that any small town could be THIS CLOSE to this actually happening. However, it's not really anything new. While it's not truly a zombie film, it's close enough, with the sick barely keeping enough coherence to make any of them unique. Sure, they don't eat people (at least that we see), but they still have some insatable urge to kill, and act accordingly. What's worse is that there isn't anything here that hasn't been covered in any previous similar movie. It's a classic "weapons-grade chemical gets into small-town water supply and chaos ensues" plotline, with only superior performances and higher production values making it better than most titles. though the film thankfully keeps the perspective on the town's few survivors and keeps out of the affairs of the military who try to contain the sickness and fail miserably. The insular storytelling works, but only barely makes up for the fact that there are no new ideas to make this title truly unique. This is hardly surprising with Eisner at the helm. Michael's son is hardly one to work with original material, with most of his existing work and future projects either being remakes or adaptations. This isn't to say he's not a good director, simply one in need of an original thought in his head, rather than one who can follow directions.

"So, do you want full service today, or just the death?"

The Crazies is a scary, smart, exciting and jaw-dropping film that has raised the bar for contemporary horror films. However, it's also derivitive, unoriginal and a little too formulaic in it's attempt to be a true modern classic like the aforementioned Evil Dead of Dawn of the Dead. With strong performances, superb effects and breathtaking story, it's good enough to be good, and that's good enough to worm itself into the year's top ten, at least for the time being. It's the new #9. Now you should be heading down to wherever you rent your films to check it out.

Resistance is Futile

Not long ago, I was bemoaning how poorly a well-known graphic novel, Whiteout, had been translated to the big screen. Among other things, the film simply didn't translate into the riveting entertainment I'd hoped for when I rented it. In writing that review, I neglected to mention two other films that had also been born from graphic novel format. One is obvious, the biggest blockbuster of them all, Watchmen, which I did not enjoy (in the immortal words of Jay Sherman: "It Stinks") nearly as much as I should have.

The other was released last fall to much less fanfare: Surrogates, based on the relatively little-known comic series of the same name which ran from 2005 to 2006, and was written by Robert Venditti and drawn by Brett Weldele. Despite never having heard of the graphic novel, my first impressions of the movie trailers that preceded the movie's release were mostly positive: In a world where humans control synthetic bodies called surrogates to carry out everyday tasks, the future almost looks idylic as violent crime is down to a standstill and even if an operator's surrogate is accidentally damaged or destroyed, no harm can come to the user. People never even have to leave their homes.

Of course, this wouldn't be much of a film if that was all there was to it. When two people are murdered by a weapon that somehow manages to kill the user as well as disable the surrogate - and one of them happens to be the son of the Surrogate's creator, Dr. Lionel Canter (James Cromwell), it's immensely remarkable because these have become the first murders in fifteen years. Also throwing trouble into the mix are nationwide pockets of people who live on anti-surrogate land that they call Dread Reservations and are led by the charismatic Prophet (Ving Rhames). Claiming that Surrogacy has caused people to forget how to be human, a Surrogate attempting to enter these zones would be violently opposed by the Prophet's fanatical followers.

What I had at first found fascinating about Surrogates was that it had been filmed in my hometown (and where I still call home) of Boston, MA, and some of the surrounding towns. It was actually interesting for once to see familiar territory, as far too often films claiming to be in Boston film elsewhere, Toronto for instance. I was sure that would be the only thing I would enjoy about the movie, especially after a less-than-stellar opening which was informative as to how this universe came to be but otherwise not entertaining. However, the slick storytelling and visuals quickly vacated those thoughts from my mind, and I proceeded to mindlessly enjoy one of last year's more underrated films.

The story moves along as a brisk pace as we're introduced to FBI agents Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) and Jennifer Peters (Radha Mitchell) as they take on the double murder case. Like most people, they use surrogates for their daily tasks, though Greer seems to tire of the entire surrogate idea, especially as his wife (Rosamund Pike) seems to use their surrogacy to escape the trauma of losing their son to a car accident. In fact, we barely see most people's real faces, as almost every major character is using a surrogate in place of their real bodies. In a major turning point of the film, Greer irreperably damages his surrogate in pursuit of the man suspected of committing the murders and must continue his investigation in person. He doesn't even remember the last time he left his home, and the movie does a good job explaining that, even seeing the world through a surrogate, reintroducing someone to the outside world after so long would introduce all kinds of mental trauma (such as anxiety, which is depicted). In his pursuit of the people responsible for the murders, he is also discovering a conspiracy to destroy the surrogates, and perhaps even those who would use them at all.

I've never read the graphic novel (or it's prequel, Surrogates: Flesh and Bone), but while I can't comment on the comic's art styles in comparison to the movie's, I can definitely say that from a quick synopsis of the comic's plot that the movie took numerous liberties with the plot, one for instance being that in the comic, there are no murders that push the book forward, only the desire to eliminate surrogacy by destroying the bodies. It's a good thing the movie changed that aspect, as in the comic's story, that would add to little more than vandalism. Also, in a positive turn, the leads of the comic, which had been two men, change, with one of them having eventually become Peters. Remember those few weeks ago when I decried the reduction of Whiteout's two lead females to one female because the studios wouldn't buy two female leads? Here's one for Surrogates showing some guts. And it's not as if Peters has been changed that way just so she can become someone's romantic angle, it's just a case of someone saying that they wanted a female for this role and made it happen.

Acting performances will never be considered the highlights of your typical action movie, that's why I was actually surprised by the level of performances shown in this film. Willis does a little above his typical acting level, while others like Cromwell, Mitchell, Pike, Jack Noseworthy and Boris Kodjoe puting forth solid performances, with nobody dragging the acting talent down. The only one I wasn't crazy about was was Rhames as the Prophet, as the character seemed a little too cliche in it's portrayal. I assume it was intentional, but I didn't think it was particularly smart to show one of the main villains of the movie in this way, though perhaps that aspect was derived from the comic. But the best performances may have been a collaborative. There's just something about the way a surrogate move and speaks that lets on that they're not the same as you and me. Besides the startling attractiveness of the surrogate, there's almost a robotic, unnatural way that they walk, talk, dance and interact that makes it easy to discern the differences, and whoever was responsible for making sure every last extra was moving just the right way deserves a ton of credit, as it did tons to assure the legitimacy of the piece's atmosphere.

The movie can hardly expect to be perfect, however. Though I understand that most people who are bigots rarely are well informed about the thing they're bigoted towards, it was a drag that no further intelligence could have been gleamed for the people in the Dread Reservation towards surrogacy. They were mostly portratyed as redneck gun-toting racists for the most part, and that, while accurate, was not wholely welcome when I hoped they would have some more higher understanding about why their way was better (or perhaps get an explanation for why the military didn't put a clamp down military-style on these pockets of resistance where they basically seceded from the Union). Critics have stated that the movie devolves to pure action-y for the final act of the film, and while that's at least partially true, it's done smartly with enough surprises that you want to find the next piece of the puzzle. It's all done smartly and never makes you feel like you're riding the wave, going only where they take you.

Smart is the best word I can associate with Surrogates, in fact. It's a slick film and probably the best film by occasional director Jonathan Mostow, who hadn't directed a film since 2003's Terminator 3. It's a great comeback film for Mostow and an extremely entertaining film in it's own right. Mostow might give Zack Snyder or Dominic Sena a lesson in how to make a good comic-movie adaptation. Maybe they'd learn something.