The Crazies

Data
Title: The Crazies
Year: 2010
Length: 101 minutes
Director: Breck Eisner
Writers: Scott Kosar & Ray Wright; based on the film by George A. Romero
Starring: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson
Music: Mark Isham (and non-original music)

My reaction
Synopsis: residents of a small town turn into psychotic killers/pseudo-zombies
How I saw it: in the theater, yesterday
Concept: Good.
Story: Bad. Lots of plot holes, and generally bad writing. I don't give it a "terrible" just because this kind of movie doesn't need a good story.
Characters: Terrible.
Dialog: Terrible.
Pacing: Good. The second half of the movie slows down a lot, but it's never boring.
Cinematography: Bad.
Special effects/design: Bad.
Acting: Indifferent.
Music: Indifferent.
Subjective Rating: 4/10 (Eh). The first act is actually pretty good. It's purely a horror movie at that point, and although I haven't seen enough serious horror movies to have a good basis of comparison, my wife and I thought it was pretty scary. And it gets its scares though suspense, not cringe-inducing violence (which would have been an easy way to go with the scenario). But then it turns into an action movie, and everything kind of falls apart. It becomes predictable, and although it's still directed as if it's a horror movie (lots of sudden loud noises and people jumping out of corners), it's not and it's just not scary anymore. The protagonists have suddenly become action heroes, with all the understood invulnerability that comes with that. The really good thing about this movie is when it gets bad, it gets really bad, and you can get some laughs at its expense. Luckily we happened to be the only two in the theater, so we could heckle all we liked - otherwise, it might have been pretty painful to sit through.
Objective Rating: 1.2/4 (Bad).