Cue the singing child

This past week, after playing trivia at our local Friday's a few of my friends bribed me into seeing the Crazies. I say bribe because, I'm not a scary movie person. It's not that they scare me, quite the contrary they bore me. The thing about scary movies is that they have all become so incredibly formulaic that it's hard not to already know what's happen when you're the type of movie watcher that I am. Though one could argue that all movies have to some extent become formulaic, as I guessed almost the entire plot of Shutter Island within the first ten minutes too. ((That was a sad disappointment, though the acting of that film is still worth the watch)). But the point is that scary movies formula is just not my cup of tea, I don't care for the high pierced music that signals my heart to beat faster or for the unnerving moment when a little girl starts singing a nursery rhyme. I'm not a huge fan of quick editing cuts telling me to feel nervous, or dim lighting to warn me that someone is going to die. But that's just me, I know plenty of people that don't like the dramas that I so thrive on.

But back to the movie at hand, The Crazies a bribe to go to a movie I clearly wouldn't have ever seen without someone making me. Starting with my favorite part of the movie going experience, I automatically noticed that even all the trailers were for up and coming horror films. The only one that really caught my eye was one that started in a diner, with a young man sitting at a booth which I automatically recognized as Kellan Lutz. I surprised even myself for knowing who the shadowy figure was on the screen but I definitely paid more attention to the trailer itself just because I'm a fan-girl of his. Nightmare on Elm Street is a movie I might invest in and I'm not sure if it's because I support Kellan Lutz or because the trailer actually intrigued me. On a factoid note about the movie itself, Nightmare on Elm Street is a remake of the very first film that Johnny Depp was in, ever. It was the movie that launch a career that has given us such wonderful films as Chocolat, Pirates, Benny and Joon and this weekend's Alice in Wonderland. So if that's saying anything about the potential of the film itself, I might as well possibly check it out!

I don't remember what else was promoted before the Crazies started but once the movie started I was set to dissect it. Before entering the theater this is what I knew about the movie: the title, the poster had a pitchfork and was dark, the trailer had screaming and I was pretty sure it was set in some rural town. That was it, I couldn't tell you who was in it or what I thought it was about or anything else. The movie started and I laughed as cue the vast wheat fields that start every horror film known to man. I'm convinced that the reason I might be afraid of large open spaces of Middle America is because that's what horror films have taught me to fear. The film started with a military styled radar screen that made me think for about five minutes that maybe the movie itself was about aliens. That idea didn't last as in the opening sequence no one died by the hands of some unknown mystery killer. Someone did indeed die, but by the hands of the town's sheriff. That little sequence of events was enough to tell me that this movie was not about a crazy killer, it wasn't some subversive message about rebellious teenagers meeting their demises. No this movie was in literary terms going to be a story of man vs. man, basically. I mean really we could debate that it was a man vs. machine but that would side track me even more than usual.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot itself, even though I fear I might already done so. But in short even though I could guess where the plot was going, the movie revealed itself half way through anyway. So then I caught myself wandering what the point of the film itself was, the journey? The fight? I'm still unclear what the real purpose was, as anyone who sees it might agree with. But at the end I didn't hate it, and I was distrubed by it and I wouldn't not maybe see it again. I enjoyed the film for what it was, I enjoyed the different twist of it not being just a lunatic killer with some vegeance. I liked the fact that it was possibly trying to make a social statement of some sort. I still correctly bet that someone wouldn't die with one of my friends who was convinced that the character would. I still hated the part where classic empty street with one young woman on a bike came out singing. I still got a good laugh out of the jumping and shrieking of the audience that was so involved in the film that they reacted when the music and the lights told them too. But all and in all, I might start giving some scary/ horror films a chance again.