The Crazies is an American Thriller released in 2010 directed by Breck Eisner, it is a remake of the 1973 film, the film
stars successful actor Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell. The movie is set in
a fictional town Ogden Marsh in Lowa, known as the ‘friendliest place on
earth’, the movie follows Olyphant as the Sheriff and Mitchell as his pregnant
wife, their town becomes accidently infected with the ‘Trixie’ virus after a
plane carrying the substance crashes in a lake whilst on its way to be
incinerated- the lake that happens to be the towns water supply, the virus
turns the infected into unaware serial killer zombie types after 48 hours, the
sheriff discovers this and asks the mayor to turn the water supply off- he
objects however the Sheriff does it anyway. The army then start taking people
and splitting up the infected and the non-infected, the sheriffs and his wife
get separated however the Sheriff rescues her and the story is following their
survival and fight, other characters are with them such as the deputy who saves
their lives as he mentions however becomes infected so sacrifices himself and a
young girl ‘Becca’ who works with ‘Judy’ the wife, she is a weaker character as
she is only a teenager and gets killed by the savages they come across, the
sheriff and his wife are the last standing until the very end when not only
they would have radiation poisoning from the nuclear bomb that blows their town
up (ordered by the government yet covered up) as they enter a new town we are
informed that it will all happen again so we assume they will die.
The Crazies does follow Todorov’s theory if you get rid of the
start and end of the film as it begins with a ‘2 days later’ clip and ends with
a cliff-hanger however because of these parts it doesn’t follow the classic
Hollywood structure. Lots of Propp’s
character types can be identified in this film; hero- Sherriff as he rescues
wife and is at alive at the end of the film, Donor/Helper- Deputy as he helps
the Sherriff through the majority of the film yet when he discovers he is
infected he sacrifices himself in order to save the Sherriff and his wife,
Princess/ Father- Wife as she is the wife of the hero however she almost
sacrifices herself for her young friend and in my opinion the villain is a
number of people- the infected, the army and the baddie gang killing people for
fun however there is no major villain.
The binary oppositions in this film could be sanity/insanity,
monster/human, military/ civilian, day/night, healthy/unhealthy. The male gaze
theory isn’t really relevant in this film as the main woman in the film is
pregnant and although does need saving she almost sacrifices herself to protect
the younger girl who also isn’t objectified sexually in any way as she is
always covered over and although she dies she doesn’t support the final girl
theory either as although she does have a boyfriend- who dies, she doesn’t have
sex, or do drugs or drink alcohol and the final girl in a sense doesn’t either
as we know she’s not a virgin as she’s pregnant, she also is the classic blonde
beauty in a film- who would normally have died.
This movie done well having made an estimated $50 million worldwide by May 2010
probably as this film is what the general public love- a jumpy thriller with
gore and a fight for survival. I really like this film; I liked the jump scares
throughout as it keeps you on the edge of your seat, I liked the storyline- the
fight for survival and how there wasn’t really a point in the film when they
was safe, there was always something going wrong or there was a threat to them
and I also liked the ending as I thought all the characters would’ve died
however the cliff hanger could lead you into thinking they are going to die
anyway or it was sequel bait however a sequel was never made.
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