Don’t drink the water!

Brought to you by OBS staff member Rose

Name: The Crazies
Rated: R
Running Time: 101 minutes

Director: Breck Eisner

Synopsis
Ogden Marsh, with a population of 1,200, is just like any other small farm town, until the town drunk walks on the baseball field during a game with a shotgun in hand and a mysterious unsettling look in his eye. After a mysterious toxin contaminates the town’s water supply, death and mayhem ensue. The question is…who will survive?

Review
Having never seen the original I came to this film with nothing to reference or compare and for this I was thankful. I was just hoping I wouldn’t be able to make a grilled cheese sandwich with it after I was done watching. Thankfully Breck Eisner’s (the son of ex-Disney head Michael Eisner) remake of George Romero’s 1973 movie does not resort to any cheesy ploys to get our attention.

What makes a good scary movie? Suspense, blood, horror, interesting plot twists, frenzied action, cat and mouse hide and go seek chases, and the probability of the storyline actually happening. The Crazies has all of this and not one, but two central villains to worry about.

After the first incident when Sheriff David Dutton (played by Timothy Olyphant) must shoot a despondent Rory Gunfield, the town drunk, the movie picks up speed and never lets down. The action is a slow motion snowball effect, creepy and unsettling, too calm at first, but this is what makes us frightened. You never know where danger lurks until it’s right upon the characters, and you jump in your seat. If you live in a small town and it unfortunately becomes contaminated by toxins, trust me, you’re not safe. The scariest aspect of the film is it could actually happen.

Graphic violence between the crazies and the sane can be compared to letting loose a hundred Mike Meyers on Xanax. However urgent in their plight to kill the unfortunate, there is a slight pause and serenity in their actions, which adds a very creepy aspect to their demented one-track mind killing. In other ways the violence shown is reminiscent of historical atrocities which is made apparent in one scene, where we see the citizens who passed government inspection, being carted off in trucks with wooden slates. Eyes peer out from inside, hands slip through, fingers gripping the slates in panic and the first thing that comes to mind is the Holocaust. It was an eerie site, one that was quite disturbing. It is no surprise this was used in the film, as the original (released when Vietnam War was still going on) also used political metaphors, ones for Communism and the Vietcong, and if they aren’t stopped, it will spread and become a problem.

The best scene set-up in this movie was the car wash scene, hands down. What Jaws did for people swimming in the ocean, this scene does for washing your car in a drive-through. Tightly shot, enclosed in basically a tin can, movement at every angle, blind spots and crazy-ass folk coming in through the windows. I was squirming in my seat. When you think it’s finally over, it’s topped off with a huge ‘holy sh*t’ moment. The movie is relentless.

Timothy Olyphant (Sheriff David Dutton), Radha Mitchell (who plays his pregnant wife Jody) and Joe Anderson (Russell Clark, David’s Deputy) really bite into their characters, with their portrayals well performed and anything but stero-typical.

With all this horror, the movie also blends in humor seamlessly, in just the right doses. The movie theater I was in provided another dose of humor that I shall share with you. Twenty minutes in, a male patron a few rows in front shouts out “Be quiet”, followed by a louder bellow “If you don’t simmer your child, I will come up there”, which was answered by a patron above and to the left of me, saying “Relax”. (All the while nothing was heard prior, so this argument was perplexing.) Another patron remarked that the male patron’s initial outburst was overboard. All was quiet, for five seconds, when someone else shouted out “Crazy!” Muffled laughter was heard round the audience. It was classic.

Anyway, back to the movie. This remake was done right, unlike other attempts like ‘It’s Alive’, which was so altered and butchered, it’s not even worth watching once, or the Halloween remakes which do the original no justice. The Crazies can stand tall and proud next to its predecessor. If you want a good scare I recommend seeing this film.

Rating: 9/10 stars

As you have already figured out by now, it’s ‘time travel’ month here at OBS, so our first movie review of the new decade is the cult-classic film ‘Donnie Darko’, a film that received 10 nominations and has won 11 awards that deals heavily with the concept of time travel.

Brought to you by OBS staff member Rose

Name: Donnie Darko
Rated: R
Running time: 113 minutes

Director: Richard Kelly

Synopsis
A trouble teen named Donnie Darko has a bizarre vision of a six foot tall demonic looking bunny, that tells him the earth will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. He narrowly misses being killed by a jet engine that crashes through his parents home, because the bunny, named Frank, leads him outside at the right moment. While Donnie tries to figure out why he was saved, the evil bunny continues to appear to him causing him to commit strange acts of vandalism that inevitably shapes the future.

Review
In 2001, Donnie Darko, produced by Drew Barrymore’s Flower Films, was originally slated to be a straight-to-video film until it was finally picked up and limitedly released. Doing poorly at the box office, Darko did not become the cult-classic hit it is today until after the fact. The movie has an all-star cast that includes Drew Barrymore as Karen Pomeroy, the late Patrick Swayze as Jim Cunningham, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Donnie’s sister, Noah Wyle as Professor Kenneth Monnitoff, Jena Malone as Gretchen, and Mary McDonnell as Donnie’s mother. Each actor is superbly cast which brings the story together beautifully, regardless of how confusing it seems to the viewer. Darko can be categorized as part teen coming of age story slash science fiction slash horror film that is both intellectually stimulating as it is entertaining.

The film opens with the song from Echo and The Bunnymen, ‘The Killing Time’ (just one of the amazing songs this soundtrack has to offer) as Donnie Darko (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who is seen traveling back to his house on his bicycle, after waking up in his pajamas, in the middle of the road by Carpathian Ridge. When he first awakens there, he looks out over the beautiful mountain tops and turns, faces the audience and smiles a knowing grin which is foreshadowing of what is to come.

Donnie is a troubled teenage boy that suffers from schizophrenia and is currently at odds with his parents and life in general. One could conclude that the ‘happenings’ that take place are simply a string of hallucinations stemming from his illness, but as the film progresses, it becomes apparent that time travel plays a bigger part in this story.  The bizarre incidents lead you to ask a plethora of questions, not only while your watching it, but even more so after it is finished, as you reflect on all the hidden meanings in the film.

You will find yourself wondering what significance does the jet-engine hold, why is Frank the Bunny visiting Donnie and causing him to act out in vandalistic acts and when is everything actually taking place?

For a deeper explanation about the paradox Donnie finds himself in, relating to the jet-engine and who Frank the Bunny is and why he appears to him, here is an excerpt from the book “The Philosophy of Time Travel”, which is written by Roberta Sparrow (Grandma Death), which is a character from the movie:

“The Jet-Engine from the future, is called the Artifact. If an Artifact occurs, the Living will retrieve it. Donnie Darko becomes the Living Receiver. The Living Receiver is chosen to guide the Artifact into position for its journey back to the Primary Universe (which is basically the past). Donnie is chosen because he is the person most affected by the Artifact (since it crashes through the roof into his bedroom), therefore he is the center of the tangent universe and the only one who can close it. It is Donnie’s job is to return the artifact to the primary universe.”

Frank the Bunny is called the Manipulated Dead. If a person dies within the Tangent Dimension, they are able to contact the Living Receiver (Donnie) through what is called the Fourth Dimensional Construct. The Manipulated Dead will often set an ‘Ensurance Trap’ for the Living Receiver to ensure that the Artifact is returned safely to the Primary Universe.”

Yes, your probably trying to wrap your brain around that one, so if you would like to dive further into the supposed meaning of the movie, for it can be confusing, you can go to here where you can read the book “The Philosophy of Time Travel” yourself.  Even so, it is still open to interpretation.

There are plenty of websites that offer in-depth looks into the film and I highly suggest checking them out to compare and expand your thoughts. But please watch it first because the in-depth looks have too many spoilers and one must see this film for the first time spoiler free, which is why I haven’t given much of anything away in this review. You may even find yourself wanting to revisit the movie again and again due to its richness and complexity.

I will say there is there is a hauntingly beautiful montage as the end that is done to “Mad World” by Gary Jules, where each character is shown remembering what happens in the future. That should be enough to whet your appetite.

Rating: 9/10 stars

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