One day after work, Sheriff David Dutton ( Timothy Olyphant) and his deputy, Russell Clank ( Joe Anderson), are watching a local school baseball game when the town drunk comes lurching into the outfield holding a shotgun.
The sheriff's office is open only from 8 to 5, Monday through Friday. Its sheriff is so good-looking, he could be the star of this movie. So we start in sweet little Ogden Marsh, Iowa, described on its Web site as "the friendliest place on Earth," and no wonder. But a zombie doesn't bring much to the party. I cannot imagine a zombie as a leading character. The protagonists of course have to be healthy. Then they started in on the damn Pringles. Before that, they were your friends and neighbors. I suppose it would be a "spoiler" if I revealed why the Crazies are on the lurch, but come on, does it matter? What if I revealed they got that way because of, oh, say, eating Pringles? Would that spoil things for you? What difference does it make? All that matters is that they got to be zombies somehow. I think zombies are defined by behavior and can be "explained" by many handy shortcuts: the supernatural, radiation, a virus, space visitors, secret weapons, a Harvard education and so on. Is there an agreed definition of what is a zombie and how they get that way? Not that I know of. Are the zombies in "The Crazies" real zombies? Maybe, maybe not.