Film Review: The Crazies (2010)
The Crazies (2010)
Release Date: February 26, 2010
Directed by: Breck Eisner
Cast: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, Danielle Panabaker
Review by: Dustin Hall
I had the pleasure this evening of attending the advance screening of The Crazies, a remake of the Romero original, at the Palms Casino in Vegas.
There must be something about Romero remakes and Johnny Cash. Dawn of the Dead opens with When the Man Comes Around, and now The Crazies opens with We’ll Meet Again. I almost have to wonder if Director Breck Eisner (Sahara) didn’t want to find a subtle way to make that very comparison. Still, it was bound to happen, I suppose. Crazies is going to be shuffled under the genre ‘zombie movie’ which is a very crowded genre lately, and is just one of a string of remakes of Romero’s horror originals. Every review out there is determined to hold The Crazies up for comparison against a dozen other films (and this one is no exception). So how does it stand up?
I wish I could say that The Crazies revolutionized the zombie genre, I really do. Hell, I wish I could say it revolutionized zombie remakes. The final result is solid, but ultimately unspectacular.
Still present are the trappings of Romero’s original work. In a rural American city (now in Iowa, in the original, Pennsylvania) a military jet crashes near the water reservoir, spilling a new chemical weapon into the town’s drink. Within two days, the populace is infected, turned into raving lunatics. Those not infected – the town Sheriff, his wife, his deputy, and a young girl – attempt to sneak out of town, hunted on one side by the crazies, and on the other by trigger-happy military units. Missing, however, is any of the depth or social commentary that was present in the ’73 version. In fact, despite the R rating it received, much of the film seems a bit watered down in comparison to the original.
Gone in this iteration of The Crazies is the scientist character, focused on curing the virus, only to be stopped by the military he was working with. This time around, the story is built entirely around the character of the Sheriff and his band of survivors. Also missing from the cast is the father/daughter duo from the original, and therefore any incest that had been present in the 70′s version. The removal of these characters has a couple of distinct effects: first off, it takes the only recognizable character out of the military part of the story, turning the soldiers into a faceless adversary and obstacle, and not the subversive, ignorant force of the original. Secondly, without the slow deterioration of the father/daughter pair into savagery and incest, the real impact of the loss of the social structure, and the fall into anarchy, are lost.
In some ways, this may be a boon for The Crazies. Certainly Romero’s films are made or broken upon the treatment of the social commentary within. Dawn of the Dead worked as a metaphor for American Consumerism (less so in the remake, as the love for shopping malls has dwindled to nothing in this country), while Land of the Dead was a confused Bush-Administration metaphor that didn’t really work with zombies, and left a lot of audience members yelling ‘bullshit!’ at the ending. So, maybe it’s best they didn’t try here. Cutting out the real commentary, though it could have been wonderful with a contemporary update, leaves a more basic, focused film with less room for error.
Unfortunately, that also gives The Crazies little that makes it stand out from the scores of movies that preceded it. The movie tends to borrow most heavily, in terms of tone and style, from Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead and 28 Weeks Later. While it manages to keep the polished look of both of those movies, and the acting and characters are pretty much on par with at least 28 Weeks, The Crazies very seldom manages either the scares or the raw energy of either of these two productions.
There is, however, a lot to like about The Crazies. There are some surprisingly good set pieces and scares in the film. A few things, like a trip through an infected-plagued car wash, which seem like a cheesy notion when you’re going through the set-up, was made into a really suspenseful situation. There’s also a moment in the film that will make every guy in the audience sit up and cup his balls for dear life. The Crazies moves very fast, keeping audiences on their toes at all times. You get your first homicidal, gun-toting lunatic within five minutes of the film’s start, and things just go from there. There’s a few spots of really appreciated dark-humor thrown into the mix as well.
So, The Crazies is good. It is. And it’s a movie that really thrives with a large audience. It will get jumps from people, and squeals from girls on dates. As horror films go, it’s completely competent and fairly satisfying. But does it offer anything new? No. And you’ll find a lot of ideas borrowed from a plethora of horror classics as well.
The Crazies is completely enjoyable, by-the-books horror. There’s not anything new about it, but maybe that’s just the curse of the remake, anyway.
