Is it that good or Timothy Olyphant?

I’ve never seen the original, George Romero version of The Crazies. I only know and love this version. (Though I am planning to watch the OG.)

I don’t have a great reason to have this on my all-time favorites list. I think it mostly has to do with nostalgia…or maybe Timothy Olyphant. This may have been the first movie I watched with him in it (sorry, not a Die Hard person).

In some ways, it’s your typical viral zombie movie. The government produced a bio weapon, and it was accidentally released to the public. In this instance, the military plane crashed, and it was introduced to a small town’s water system. Cue the undead and small town sheriff trying to survive.

But this virus turns you into a psychopathic murderer before k*lling and then reviving you into an undead psychopathic murderer. It’s interesting that these zombies rely on human weapons, and not in the “smart zombie” sense: an evolutionary change that allows them to hunt and eat more efficiently. Most zombies eat humans; these do not. They’re intent on mass murder. They also “turn” before expiring, but don’t change behavior when they’re undead. The change happens while they’re alive.

There are several scenes from this movie that stick out in my memory. One of them being the opening. The movie starts out hot, as a farmer holding a shotgun strolls onto the green in the middle of a little-league baseball game. I don’t think that scene would be memorable if it had occurred later in the movie, but it hits you right out of the gate and sustains throughout.

The guy with the buzzsaw. Another with a pitchfork. The carwash scene. The truck stop garage. They’re not particularly gory or gratuitous (not to hardened horror fans – I wouldn’t attempt this movie if you’re new or squeamish), just a little inventive and the right amount of horror action.

It is a fast-paced plot, probably so they can cram all these action scenes in. It borders on ridiculousness, but I’m into it. It’s a start-to-finish HORROR movie, and not the modern-day brutal kind. There’s a mix of on- and off-screen k*lls. Most of the “shock” horror is a brief camera pan to a zombie corpse. Though I will say that unlike other zombie flicks, these zombies are much more human-like, which is why it ranks a little higher on the gore scale than the almost-comical gore from your average zombie movie.

I feel like good choices were made for this movie, and that’s probably because the OG story comes from the man credited with inventing the zombie genre. It’s not a huge departure from canon, but it’s enough of a tweak to make it really interesting.

Still, is it really that good or is it…Olyphant?