Line #2 Film/TheCrazies2010


1	[[quoteright:259:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/crazies_ver2.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:259:[[TagLine Fear thy neighbour]].]]
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4	->'''Bill:''' "She worries too much. I'm fine. I'm just tired."
5	->'''Judy:''' "So, what are you doing for the weekend?"
6	->'''Bill:''' "[[BrokenRecord She worries too much. I'm fine. I'm just tired.]]"
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8	''The Crazies (2010)'' is a 2010 American zombie horror film directed by Breck Eisner, written by Scott Kosar and Ray Wright, and produced and distributed by Overture Films and Participant Media. It is TheRemake of ''Film/{{The Crazies\|1973}}'', and stars Creator/TimothyOlyphant, Creator/RadhaMitchell, Joe Anderson, and Creator/DaniellePanabaker. Creator/GeorgeARomero, who directed the original, serves as an executive producer here.
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10	The residents of the farming community Ogden Marsh go about their daily lives, but everything changes when one resident walks into a crowded baseball game with a shotgun, silent and stoic. When he's shot down, the town's sheriff David (Olyphant) and town doctor Judy (Mitchell) realize that an unknown biological agent is turning those infected into cold, calculating, emotionless, and insane killers. And things go FromBadToWorse when they realize that the military arriving in town has no intentions of saving any residents, ''only killing them all'', making escape a precarious task.
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12	The movie is well known for being a RemadeAndImproved version of the original, garnering positive reception from both critics and audiences, being a mild box office success, and has earned CultClassic status as a result.
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14	----
15	!!''The Crazies (2010)'' provides examples of:
16	* AdaptationalWimp: The remake's version of the Trixie Virus in this movie is less dangerous than the one in the 1973 original. For one, the remake Crazies have a maximum lifespan of two days whereas the original Crazies had no such expiration date if they survived the initial two-day incubation. Furthermore, the remake Crazies is more ObviouslyEvil and shows noticeable symptoms such as skin lesions and unusual eye color whereas the original Crazies [[TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse looked no different from the uninfected]] and thus blended in better with the healthy population.
17	* AllThereInTheManual: The motion comic showed not only that the chemical also infected animals, but also how that happened. It also showed how the pilot died and how Rory got infected - in fact, he was the first to try to raise a fuss after witnessing his pigs go berserk and see the stuff in the water.
18	* AxCrazy: The three hunters in the swamp who are so gung ho for hunting that they do so in the off-season. But the infection makes the ''whole town'' AxCrazy before too long. People with specific mental focus had their insanity present based on their foci.
19	** The hunters' AxCrazy manifests as them deciding it's open season [[spoiler:on people, infected or not]].
20	** A mother and son manifest theirs as a single-minded desire for revenge on David [[spoiler:for killing Rory, the husband/father]].
21	* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: Done for pretty much the entire town, but this trope can be mainly attributed with Deputy Russell Clank. He starts out as the one who helps David the most and even saves his life on several occasions. However, as the film progresses, it becomes pretty obvious that Russell is losing his mind, becoming increasingly unstable to the point where he murders someone in an instant MoodWhiplash. Fortunately, he's able to hold it together long enough to help our main characters escape, sacrificing himself so that they can live.
22	* ArmiesAreEvil: Unsurprising as a staple of Romero's films.
23	** Played with in this version, as the grunts [[spoiler:have been lied to -- they were told that everyone was infected regardless of appearance]], and it's ambiguous as to whether the slain civilians they find in the end are due to them becoming infected or not.
24	** The motion comic suggests that there was a breakdown at the evacuation zone as well, which would explain the slain civilians. Also, seeing as the military probably didn't have the manpower to go after every single infected in such a large, open town, there really was no other way to ensure quarantine after containment was broken.
25	* BerserkButton: Do NOT threaten David's wife. You won't live to see sunlight ''[[YouAreAlreadyDead ever again]]''. Least until you get a [[spoiler:knife through your throat.]]
26	* BoomHeadshot: How Russell executes a Government Agent who was sent in to investigate the situation.
27	* BrickJoke:
28	** The group gets a car working, and begins driving to the evac zone. Along the way, a military copter spots them on the highway and makes chase, and they pull into a car wash to lose the chopper. After a fight through the car wash after getting trapped, the car getting smashed to hell and [[spoiler:Becca's death]], they turn to go back to the car... right as the copter flies by and drops a bomb on it.
29	** [[spoiler:Initiate containment protocol.]]
30	* CannibalLarder: The hunters had commandeered a giant freezer in a truck stop and turned it into a larder full of corpses.
31	* CaptainObvious: People have started acting insane (sometimes homicidally so), the request for a transfer of a completely whacked out prisoner to a better facility has been ignored, an unidentified and unreported plane has crashed in the town's drinking water, and suddenly everyone has lost phone service and internet connection. Fortunately, Sheriff Obvious is there to tell people that they're in trouble. The people don't listen.
32	* CassandraTruth: David. He goes to the Mayor to warn that he thinks the water supply is contaminated. The Mayor refuses to give his hunch credence - however, it was more due to his concern for keeping a farming community thriving during planting season than ignoring a potential biohazard.
33	* CellPhonesAreUseless: The cell phone signal goes down as the virus starts to spread. At least here there is some explanation, seeing as the military likely cut off phone connection in the town.
34	* ChekhovsGun:
35	** The lighter David picks up at Quick Phil's, and the car under the tarp in his barn.
36	** Disappointingly subverted with the harvester. It looks like it's being set up to be one, but it's never seen again.
37	* ChekhovsGunman:
38	** The Black SUV driver who photographs the townspeople for the government later gets an InfoDump scene, though the person inside the SUV seen when we first see the car.
39	** The three rednecks that discover the drowned pilot at the beginning of the film [[spoiler:go on a human-hunt during the outbreak, killing infectees and non-infectees alike. They even provide the final confrontation with the heroes.]]
40	* ComicallySmallBribe: The principal tries to give David free snacks at the high school baseball games to get out of paying his parking tickets.
41	* CompressedAdaptation: The remake streamlines its plot by cutting the scientist/government storyline, allowing it to [[DevelopingDoomedCharacters further flesh out the story of the townsfolk]].
42	* DamselInDistress: Any time David leaves Judy alone for more than two minutes, she ends up facing a crazy and needing rescuing. She beats the shit out of a crazy in the scene with the no-touch car wash, though, and later in the big rig. Pretty much everyone but Russell qualifies as a '[Pronoun] in Distress' at one point or another. It's that kind of movie.
43	* DeathByCameo: Creator/GlennMorshower shows up as a government agent who gets his brains blown out by an infected Russell.
44	* DeathOfAChild: [[spoiler:Bill burns his wife and son alive]], and all of the townsfolk, save for the four survivors, are killed by the army and their bodies burned.
45	* DontMakeMeDestroyYou: Sheriff Dutten gives Rory, the first infectee, multiple warnings before finally shooting him, and is [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone visibly devastated]] upon discovering the shot was fatal.
46	* DoubleTap: Russell finishes off two Crazies by shooting their twitching corpses, much to the horror of his companions. He attempts to justify it, that he was "just making sure" but everyone in the audience [[{{Foreshadowing}} should know]] that this is the first clue that Russell has the 'Trixie' Virus, and will soon go nuts.
47	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Everyone David and Judy knew is now dead since the government [[NukeEm nuked their home town]] after indiscriminately killing EVERYONE inside. Even when they escape to Cedar Rapids, a satellite catches sight of them, and the military initiates the same containment protocol once more. TheStinger then shows a Crazy appearing on the news, so the Trixie Virus somehow got out despite all the military's efforts. According to [[AllThereInTheScript the original script]], this is because David is infected.]]
48	* DownOnTheFarm: Ogden Marsh is an agricultural community.
49	* DrivenToMadness: The ''entire'' town, save a few, thanks to an engineered virus in the water supply. We even get to see some of the people and how normal they were before they lost their marbles:
50	** The High School Principal goes from coaching baseball to impaling people with a pitchfork.
51	** The Coroner in the Funeral Parlor performs autopsies on deceased townsfolk, then begins mutilating people and sewing their eyes and mouths shut.
52	** Rory Hamill's wife and son seem to be decent people before they went insane and decided to murder David and his wife (thankfully, they fail). For that matter, Rory himself, an alcoholic with two years of sobriety.
53	** Last but not least and probably the most notable, a group of hunters are shown hunting game in the marshes (albeit illegally) not long before they decided to begin hunting humans for sport, even converting a storeroom at a truck stop into a pantry to string up human corpses.
54	* EasterEgg: You have to watch through the credits for this - [[spoiler: Find the Truth: [[http://ogdenmarsh.com/ www.ogdenmarsh.com]]]] which leads to a blog and a twitter account for some of the residents of Ogden Marsh.
55	* FacingTheBulletsOneLiner: [[spoiler:Russell]] lives long enough to tell the government [[spoiler:"Fuck you for what you did."]]
56	* ForTheEvulz:
57	** Subverted. It strongly appears initially that the Military is murdering and imprisoning civilians for no reason other than they're the BigBad Military, but it's later revealed that the soldiers have all been told that every civilian in the area is violently infected, whether or not they appear to be at first, and killing them is purely done in self-defense.
58	** Government agents likewise justify what they're doing as a means to keep any other towns or cities from getting contaminated, which is implied to have failed in the end.
59	** Played straight with the titular infected, who seek to hurt or kill anyone they can because they've become AxCrazy.
60	* GasMaskMooks: The only human interaction between the townspeople and the soldiers comes when they grab one named Billy Babcock and pull his mask off, and when Russell charges their blockade.
61	* GroinAttack: With a ''[[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill buzzsaw]].''
62	* HarmlessLuminescence: Judy stares directly into [[spoiler:the nuke that wipes out the town]], which would be normally blinding, for about five seconds before she puts her hand up to block it.
63	* HatePlague: Of a very literal kind.
64	* HereWeGoAgain: [[spoiler:When David and Judy finally make it to Cedar Rapids]], the same military satellite from the beginning [[spoiler:orders for another containment procedure to start there.]]
65	* HeroOfAnotherStory: While the heroes are trying to figure out how to escape from quarantine, a seemingly uninfected group of men led by someone named Tom Ellis avoid the roundup of the townspeople, get some guns, and drive through the fence, allowing a lot of people to escape. They are only seen briefly, and from a distance, and most of the group is shot within seconds. Subverted, though, in that we can't be sure whether Tom's group weren't infected after all and did what they did just to cause chaos.
66	* HeroicSacrifice: By [[spoiler:Russell]], doubling as a case of [[spoiler:[[DyingAsYourself dying as himself]]]].
67	* HesDeadJim:
68	** Subverted. After David shoots the first townsperson to display ''the crazies'', he goes to check on his vitals.
69	** Played straight in many other examples, though. The [[spoiler:drowned parachuting pilot]] is examined by the ME.
70	** The funeral home and the medical examiners' office scenes are {{justified\|Trope}} examples, as is the scene where David, Judy, Russell and Becca watch [[spoiler:Scotty and his mother]] shot down and then burned by flamethrowers.
71	** The scenes involving [[spoiler:truckloads of burned bodies]], the [[spoiler:hunters']] freezer full of people, etc.
72	* HopeSpot: After David and Russel defy orders and shut off the water flow that is infecting people, it seems like there's a chance things will get under control. Then the military shows up to put everyone in a quarantine camp and most of the people left running wild are Crazies worse than the ones seen before.
73	* HowWeGotHere: The film begins with the town burning to the ground. It lets that image sear the retinas for a bit before it flashes away to "two days earlier:".
74	* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: This Romero staple is also present in both the original and the remake; while the virus certainly causes insanity and violent tendencies in its hosts, it should be noted that most of those infected maintain self-awareness and personality, some retain their full intelligence, and some aren't even violent at all. The murderous acts committed by those who ''do'' turn violent seem to stem from their own deep, subconscious desires, such as for revenge, or for an "entertaining" hunt, or to slice up on living bodies. As such, it can be argued that Trixie doesn't ''make'' the townsfolk murderers, it just ''brings out'' their violent intentions.
75	* IDidWhatIHadToDo: The government agent in the SUV says that their measures are to stop an even bigger spread -- "What would you rather have, a global pandemic?" The horrible irony is that, given how ambiguous the ending is, it might well wind up like that anyway.
76	* TheImmune: [[spoiler:David, Judy, and possibly her unborn child are all immune to the virus.]]
77	* ImpaledPalm: The town sheriff gets a boning knife through his palm. Later in the same scene, he grabs a Crazy woman by the throat with the same hand, sending the knife into a major blood vessel.
78	* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: The people who get pitchforked while strapped to hospital beds and completely unable to escape. At least they're crazy.
79	* ImprobableWeaponUser:
80	** Not only are the crazies able to use weapons, but they're creative enough to turn a [[spoiler:car wash]] into a deathtrap.
81	** There's the knife that was [[spoiler:stabbed through David's hand]].
82	* InvulnerableKnuckles: At one point, the heroes witness a couple of infected teenagers using trash dumpsters as punching bags, apparently without breaking their hands.
83	* IronicEcho: Two times in the movie, Russel says 'Hello to you too' to David. The first is when David barges into his office and starts barking orders. The second is when David has a gun pointed to his head.
84	* ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure: [[spoiler:A nuclear weapon is employed to stop the spread of the infection beyond Ogden Marsh.]]
85	* JumpScare: Many. Mostly characters getting grabbed or eyes or faces suddenly appearing.
86	** Even the goddamn DVD Menu has one, involving a photoshop of a little girl in a gas mask suddenly lurching at the audience in time to the music. While not much of a jump scare, it's still quite scary/creepy to those who aren't expecting it.
87	* KillTheCutie: [[spoiler:Becca, when one of the crazies hangs her at the car wash.]]
88	* KillItWithFire: The second infected man [[spoiler:does this to his wife and son]]. And the military does it to [[spoiler:the whole town from more than one angle]]!
89	* KubrickStare: The crazies sport this. It's even lampshaded by one of the police officers when he compares the second infected person to the first one (Bill to Rory).
90	* MadnessMantra: An early symptom of Trixie, those who have been recently infected are shown to subconsciously repeat sentences they have just spoken.
91	* MercyKill: [[spoiler:Russell's death at the hands of the soldiers can double as this to prevent him from becoming fully infected.]]
92	* MouthStitchedShut: Eyes too in the medical examiner's office.
93	* MyCarHatesMe: The carwash scene.
94	* MythologyGag:
95	** While other characters and the ending credits only refer to him by his first name, Russell at one point mentions his surname is Clank, a reference to the character from the original he's based on.
96	** When Russell stops the government SUV, he says to the driver, "Welcome to Pierce County, the friendliest place on Earth, asshole." This is a reference to a sign which appears in one of the posters (or vice-versa).
97	** The old Ford LTD police car that the group attempts to escape in is a ''1973'' model, the same year that [[Film/TheCrazies1973 the original movie was released]].
98	* NewscasterCameo: The newscaster in the credits is Bruce Aune, a real [=KCRG-TV9=] anchor.
99	* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: The film takes place in the fictional town of Ogden Marsh in the also fictitious Pierce County, Iowa. [[spoiler: Cedar Rapids, the city David and Judy escape to at the end of the film, is real however]].
100	* NoFEMAResponse: The remake has the first city cordoned off and Fuel Air Bombed. Worse, they make everybody think they're evacuating when they're really just herding them into trucks to execute them with machine guns and burn the bodies. Survivors make it to another city which is then targeted for the same treatment.
101	** The latter could possibly be an aversion. There was evidence outside civilian help had been brought in (civilian ambulances at the evacuation point) and the motion comic strongly suggests there was a breakdown of order at the evacuation point after the containment area was breached.
102	* NotUsingTheZWord:
103	** Given that the infected remain intelligent, and in a few cases extremely creative, this might be justified.
104	** They also do not eat flesh. And, unless David was infected from the beginning (He did happen to get through the military's inspection) the "virus" does not appear to be a virus at all since he didn't become infected after having infected blood in an open wound. It sounds more like a chemical weapon than a biological one.
105	** Averted in the [[AllThereInTheManual motion comics]] where the later infected very obviously bite people and one of the hunters starts eating a soldier.
106	* NukeEm: In case things went completely out of hand, the military was authorized to nuke the town. [[spoiler:They are given the go-ahead.]]
107	* OhCrap: At the truck stop, when [[spoiler:Judy]] reaches down to help [[spoiler:David]] into the truck, just as they're about to make their escape, he feels a hand grab his ankle. The look on his face says it all.
108	* OurZombiesAreDifferent: TheVirus (which is waterborne instead of being spread via {{Plague Zombie}}s) turns the infected into {{Technically Living Zombie}}s, and is technically a HatePlague. The infected still remember how to walk, talk, drive, use tools and do ''all'' that stuff that'd usually be used by aliens or fairies as evidence that HumansAreTheRealMonsters, but they're ''off'' enough in their heads that they become AxCrazy machines who use human ingenuity to gruesomely torture and kill indiscriminately. As the infection worsens, the infected look more zombie-like. It's demonstrated in the film that the infected only have a lifespan of a matter of days once they're infected.
109	* [[OutrunTheFireball Outdrive the Fireball]]: [[spoiler:Subverted. The nuke still overtakes them and blasts the truck off course, but they survive with minor injuries.]]
110	* PacManFever: The second motion comic has random bleep-bloop sounds coming from Nicholas' Nintendo DS. When his DS is shown later falling to the ground, a generic pixilated landscape is shown.
111	* ParachuteInATree: The skeletal remains of a long-dead parachuter are found entangled in a tree.
112	* PaterFamilicide: Bill does this to his wife and son, but instead of killing himself or blaming someone else, both of which is what a typical family killer would do, he goes on with his life until he gets arrested.
113	* ThePlague: The payload of the plane that went down and contaminated the water.
114	* ProperlyParanoid: When the heroes first escape quarantine, Russell predicts that he'll develop the same symptoms as the Crazies due to living far closer to the contaminated water supply than David and Judy. [[spoiler:He's right]].
115	* PunchClockVillain: Billy Babcock, one of the soldiers who was briefly held hostage by David, Russell, Judy and Becca before he is released by them, is one due to admitting that he [[NotWhatISignedOnFor did not sign up to take innocent unarmed lives]], realizing they were lied to about wearing a gas mask to avoid death, which apparently does not happen to Babcock and apologizing for what happened to their town. In return for being shown mercy, Babcock doesn't rat out on them to his platoon as they move out.
116	* PunnyName: Quick Phil's gas station/diner.
117	* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Sheriff David Dutten.
118	** Also, Deputy Russell Clank, [[spoiler: that is before he becomes infected]].
119	* RecoveredAddict: Rory is known as the village drunk, even though he had stopped drinking two years before the events of the film. When he walks with a gun to the baseball field in the middle of a game and does not seem to understand what is happening around him, the sheriff believes he started drinking again. When Rory dies, however, the tests show that he had no alcohol in his blood.
120	* ReluctantPsycho: [[spoiler: After Russell realizes he’s infected and slowly going mad from the disease, he’s visibly distraught, and [[HeroicSacrifice ultimately chooses to end his own life helping David and Judy escape before he loses what little sanity he had left.]]]]
121	* SceneryGorn: Right after [[spoiler: the big explosion]].
122	* SceneryPorn: There are many landscape shots showcasing fields and farms throughout the film. Some are even taken at sunrise or sunset.
123	* SequelHook: [[spoiler: David, Judy and their unborn child make it to Cedar Rapids. Then the military satellite from the beginning orders to "Initiate containment protocol." In addition, a news broadcast is interrupted by at least one of the crazies in the credits.]]
124	* SinisterScrapingSound[=/=]SwordDrag: [[spoiler:The school principal]] with his pitchfork as well as [[spoiler:the hunters at the truck stop with his knife]].
125	* SoundtrackDissonance:
126	** The happy "Bring Me Sunshine" by Willie Nelson is played during the credits, even though the disease is still spreading.
127	** The bedroom confrontation is all kinds of messed up. And it's all played to the soothing tune of "Brahms' Lullaby", while mixing in some of the original music as well for further measure.
128	* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler: Judy, who serves as the FinalGirl.]]
129	* StayWithMeUntilIDie: [[spoiler: Russell, once he finally realizes he's infected, asks to walk with David and Judy for a little while longer. He rewards their kindness by pulling a HeroicSacrifice to let them evade the barricade]].
130	* SurpriseVehicle: Despite being surrounded by flat terrain with no buildings, they don't notice there's a helicopter gunship searching for them until it's almost overhead. The 'copter doesn't seem to notice them, either.
131	* TaintedVeins: A late symptom of infection with the Trixie virus.
132	* TechnicallyLivingZombie: The infected also remain alive.
133	* ThousandYardStare: The infected sometimes have this when they're non-violent.
134	* TheVirus: A bio-weapon derived from the same family of viruses as [[TheDreaded rabies]], which over the course of several days makes its infected hosts descend into homicidal mania and then makes them go from looking normal to gaining freaky eyes and wormy grey skin. The Trixie virus' infected victims can ''crudely'' mimic human behavior but it should become clear to any common-sensed person within 30 seconds that they're behaving off.
135	* WhatYouAreInTheDark: When Becca and Judy are alone in a room with one of the Crazies, who has just killed everyone the medical team left strapped down, and is approaching Judy after her BigNO distracted him from killing Becca, Becca could just stay quiet and hope he ignores her. Instead she keeps pleading for him to spare Judy even though it risks drawing his attention back to her.
136	* ZombieApocalypse
137	* ZombieInfectee: [[spoiler:Russell.]] He recognizes this and delivers a HeroicSacrifice to distract the military to give the protagonists a chance to get past the quarantine.

Context Film / TheCrazies2010