The only horror movie he made between the more overtly horrific NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and MARTIN, George A Romero’s THE CRAZIES is a flawed picture but an important contribution to the wave of paranoid, authority-baiting, subversive, bitterly ironic 70’s American horror films he helped to inspire. Romero gets a token executive producer credit on this impressive remake (he had no involvement whatsoever) and that film’s modestly iconic star, Lynn Lowry has a nudge-nudge cameo (riding a bicycle round and round, singing “All Things Bright and Beautiful” in a quietly nutty fashion), though the movie is good enough, and the original is imperfect enough, to stand on its own.
Co-written by Scott Kosar (also responsible for the AMITYVILLE and CHAINSAW remakes, plus the infinitely more original THE MACHINIST), the movie reworks the Vietnam-era original for the grim post-9/11 bio-weapon fearing, War-In-Iraq-hating 21st century. It wastes no time with its set up : a small farming community has been the unwitting host to a covered-up military plane crash that unceremoniously dumped the deadly biological weapon “Code Name Trixie” into its river. The local water supply gets contaminated, a lethal virus becomes airborne, and the residents are swiftly turned into ever-declining grotesque psychotics. Sheriff Timothy Olyphant, his doctor wife (Radha Mitchell) and his deputy will become the only survivors as the military (an even more faceless and threatening force than in the original) closes in, shooting and incinerating everything in sight.
Eerily book-ended with the usually innocuous sounds of “We’ll Meet Again” and “Bring Me Sunshine” (adding to the effectiveness of Mark Isham’s discreetly discordant score), the new CRAZIES is a fast-paced, action-based genre flick that scores early on with genuinely creepy scenes of everyday folks behaving insanely. The initial scenes of middle aged men wandering casually on to baseball fields with loaded shotguns and calmly incinerating their own families and homes are so effective that you sometimes wish there had been greater focus on the outbreak and a less urgent progression to focus on the impact of the military presence.
Nonetheless, when the army take over the town’s fate, the pic becomes an intense chase movie and director Eisner (though relying on at least two too many clichéd false-scare moments) adeptly uses the widescreen frame for chilling reveals while eking a lot of suspense out of the set pieces. The best of these involve an infected coroner with a runaway bone saw and a methodically brutal pitchfork-wielding crazy’s attempt on our heroine’s life. It’s taut and tense and judicious in its use of explicit gore, making the occasional moments of graphic bloodshed all the more startling.
Amidst the well staged action and thrills, there’s a very solid turn from the always-committed Olyphant, while Mitchell does well in an under-written role and Daniella Panabaker (of the FRIDAY THE 13TH remake) has even less to work with. The cynical view of the government-sanctioned “solution” echoes many of the themes that dominate Romero’s career and is reinforced by a suitably grim denouement in which nuking the affected Iowa town amounts to nothing and the whole process looks set to start again. Kudos to everyone for not cutting the balls off this remake, and we forgive them for the fact that the circular ending mirrors a stylistic trick from the ending of THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
