The Crazies Opens today at Quality 16, Showcase, Brighton Review by Corey Hall of the Metro Times Grade: B

Timothy Olyphant in "The Crazies."

Nihilistic to the very last shot, "The Crazies" still manages to deliver an adrenaline packed jolt of good old fashioned terror. Based on a 1973 George Romero shocker, this slick, efficient and highly effective remake matches the original’s level of mayhem and often exceeds it, helped by a vastly larger budget, tighter script and another 3 decades of screen scare tactics to build off of.

This time the action shifts from Romero’s cherished hilly western Pennsylvania to pancake-flat Iowa, where the sleepy hamlet of Ogden Marsh gets a very nasty wake-up call. After a government plane crashes in the local lake, the townsfolk start sporting symptoms of a weird infection, leading to extremely violent outbursts, insanity or death. It turns out the water supply has been contaminated with an experimental bio chemical weapon, and waves of Hazmat suited CDC agents and army troops swoop in to surround the town, squeezing off any hope of escape. Stuck in the middle of this chaos is sturdy Sheriff Dave (Timothy Olyphant) and his clever wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), who struggle to stay alive and find some way out of this insane nightmare scenario.

Read the full review here