I enjoy scary movies. Even the bad ones will still make you squirm in your seat, cover your eyes, and nearly cause your heart to leap out of your chest. An unexpected killer hiding around the corner is frightening. A dead body falling out of the closet when a girl just wants to grab a new blouse is terrifying. In short, a scary movie is a scary movie, and it’s hard for a director to fail at filling the audience with that crippling fear he aims for.

Story is another matter. A lot of scary movies compromise story, the most important element of a STORYtelling medium like film, for the sake of wrapping up a contrived, goosebump-inducing plot. Sure you jumped out of your seat a couple times along the way, but you felt unfilled in the end because the weak story just didn’t add up. “You know that guy that every little bit of information we’ve been giving you throughout the movie suggests couldn’t be the killer? Well, he is after all! Surprised, huh?” In horror movies, surprise is a good technique for scaring the audience. “Nothing’s happening, nothing’s happening, noth- surprise! Someone jumps out at the protagonist out of nowhere! I made scary, no?” Yes, sir, you made scary. Here’s a cookie.

Surprise twists in a plot, on the other hand, usually cripple the story because the filmmakers are better at creating ninety minutes of gore than tying together ninety minutes of action and character development. The twists are meant to explain every thing that has happened up to that point, induce an “a-ha!” moment, and tie together all the loose ends of the film. That rarely happens, though. In fact, if you consider all the run-of-the-mill scary movies that come out every year, you’ll be able to recognize that, most of the time, those course-altering explanations ultimately fall short of satisfying the audience.

That’s what makes The Crazies a scary movie of a higher ilk. It’s on a completely different level than the studios’ usual horror releases. Each year the majors flood theaters, most typically around Halloween or the throw-away first couple months of the year, with, let’s say, a dozen horror movies. For the most part, these are nothing special. They try to be the next Ring, or the next Saw, or the next Scream - whatever successful horror movie is worth duplicating - but you’re lucky if one of those films in a given year lives up to its own expectations. Thankfully, The Crazies defies the odds and does.

This complicated, intelligent, and well thought out horror-thriller brings you through one small Iowa township’s nightmare. The town suddenly sees its people undergo strange and violent changes into the walking not-quite-dead. Throughout the story, each revealed piece of the puzzle to explain Ogden Marsh, Iowa’s predicament is a logical revelation. Too often do a scary movie’s reveals make you shake your head and say no “No, that can’t be right” or “That’s it?” In the case of The Crazies, the reveals only heighten the suspense and the odds, building the terror of the main characters’ world as they come face to face with how much the deck is really stacked against them.

It will not be the scariest movie you ever see, but The Crazies will be one of the better and more original major horror-thriller releases you’ve seen in a long time because it’s able to be simultaneously smart and terrifying. If you’re someone who appreciates a good scary movie like I do, you’ll understand how rare that is to come across.