Narrative Structures and The Crazies (Eisner, 2010)

Does The Crazies follow the classic Hollywood narrative?

No, it doesn’t. The film begins with a flash forward of a house fire, so from this point you know that the CHN is not being followed as there is no equilibrium at the beginning. After this flash forward, the majority of the rest of the film does follow the CHN. It starts with an equilibrium when everything seems as normal as ever. The disturbance becomes recognisable to the characters after the death of Rory. The rest of the film is spent following the lives of a group of characters trying to solve as escape the disturbance. At the end of the film it seems as if the two surviving characters have escaped the explosion and are now safe living a new equilibrium. However, the last shot of the film is of the ‘crazies’ satellite about to attack the new location the characters think they will be safe in.          

How many of Propp’s character types can be identified in the film?

The ‘hero’ of the film is David and the ‘princess’ is his wife Judy. David spends the whole film looking after Judy, this is shown from the beginning when he won’t leave the quarantine without her. Everything David does is for Judy, even the survival from ‘the crazies’. This is proved when David says to Judy ‘if you want to sit here and die, I’ll sit here and die with you’. The obvious ‘villains’ are the crazies and Russel is the ‘false hero’. Russel starts the film as a hero like character. However, he must not be immune to the contaminated water as during the film he takes a bad turn and attempts to kill his friends.

The Hero 

 

The False Hero 

The Princess 

The Villains

List five examples of binary opposites in the film and explain them briefly.

     1)      Good and evil. The uninfected people are good and the crazy killers are evil.  

     2)      Human and nonhuman. The evil crazies make ordinary people seem even more ordinary than ever. 

     3)      Known and unknown. Human life is known as we live it. Whereas, the crazies are unknown.    

     4)      Safety and danger.  

     5)      Normal and strange.

Identify the three ‘durations’ and give an estimate of the time each duration covers.  

Screen duration (the time the film takes to show) - 92 minutes.

Plot duration (the length of time the plot covers) - 4 days.

Story duration (the length of time the story covers including the inferred events we bring to it) - years.

Give two examples of events that cause later events in the film but which occur before the film ‘starts’.   

Before the film begins the government have created a chemical which turns humans into ‘crazies’. A plane carrying this chemical crashes into the water supply of the town which the film is set in. This event is spoken about in the film, but isn’t shown as it happens before the film starts. Judy getting pregnant is another example of an event that causes later events in the film but occurs before the film starts. Judy being pregnant is the reason why her and David survive till the end of the film. David goes back to rescue Judy in the ‘deamination’ section of the film and if he was to carry on without her, David would’ve been exterminated with all people he was originally with and Judy would’ve been killed by the school teacher.

List an event from the 92-minute film that happen in a different time and space to the one we are shown.     

Towards the end of the film the audience hear someone doing a countdown to the destruction of the city over the radio stolen by David. It is obvious that this is happening in a different space to the one we see in the film, as no one would want to destroy somewhere they are, themselves.

Also happening in a different space, is the final scene of the film. Once the hero and princess believe they are safe, as the audience, we see a birds eye view shot explaining that 'the crazies' plan to destroy the new place they have escaped to. Such birds eye view shot is shown in a satellite form and appears to be in a different space to where the film is set. Such scene can be viewed from 9.10 to 9.45 in this video clip.