The Crazies - 7.8/10

Just watched "The Crazies" on my girlfriends laptop. It seems like just another Zombie/infection horror film... but it's not really a zombie movie at all. As much as I love films about the undead, this one was refreshingly different. Infection spreads through a small town's water supply, turning those who drink it into violent and maniacal killers. So even though it is a remake of an old 1973 horror film, it's original in that it's concept is different enough to set it apart from many other typical sci-fi infection films. The "Crazies" in this movie aren't always absent-minded and dumb, nor are they only out to feed on the flesh of the living. They just want to kill everyone. The best part about this movie? It's tense and nerve-wracking from start to finish. You know that feeling you get during the select few scenes in a horror movie when you know that something bad is going to happen? Stretch that across an hour and a half and you get "The Crazies". Without the tension I would probably give this movie a 6.5 to a 7, but it kept me on edge and in anticipation for a good chunk of the running time, which really made this movie much more involving and enjoyable. So significantly better than a 7, although not quite an 8 because of the lame ending.

Simplicity

"Simplicity begins in inward focus and unity. It means to live out of what Thomas Kelly calls 'The Divine Center.'

...Experiencing the inward reality liberates us outwardly. Speech becomes truthful and honest. The lust for status and position is gone because we no longer need status and position. We cease from showy extravagance not on the ground of being unable to afford it, but on the grounds of principle. Our goods become available to others. We join the experience that Richard E. Byrd, after months alone in the barren Arctic, recorded in his journal, 'I am learning... that a man can live profoundly without masses of things'

Contemporary culture lacks both the inward reality and the outward life-style of simplicity. We must live in the modern world, and we are affected by its fractured and fragmented state. We are trapped in a maze of competing attachments. One moment we make decisions on the basis of sound reason and the next moment out of fear of what others will think of us. We have no unity or focus around which our lives are oriented.

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.' Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.

This psychosis permeates even our mythology. The modern hero is the poor boy who purposefully becomes rich rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. Covetousness we call ambition. Hoarding we call prudence. Greed we call industry."

- Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline

Eternity in the Hearts of Men

We are imperfect beings who are told to follow after the One who was, in every way, without flaw. How could a purpose such as this not be painful? It defies our flesh, our earthly desires and even our comfort. And yet, we somehow realize that we discover more fulfillment in this pursuit of something that is seemingly eternal - something that God has inarguably set in our hearts long before we were formed - than in any of the passing things offered by this world that may distract us from Him, His plans and His glory.

Eternity is always within our grasp and is available to us, but we always seem to be occupied with chasing after the wind. All of these other things will be here for a moment, and then gone.