The Crazies Review [2]

Posted by Trevor Snyder on 03.04.2010

When is a zombie film not a zombie film? When it's The Crazies.

THE CRAZIES (2010)



Directed by: Breck Eisner
Screenplay by: Scott Kosar and Ray Wright
Based on the screenplay by: George A. Romero
Starring: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, and Danielle Panabaker
Rated R for bloody violence and language.


Breck Eisner’s The Crazies is an above-average remake of a fairly average film. George Romero’s 1973 original is a decent but very flawed movie, fondly remembered more for who made it than for the quality of the film itself. In that sense, it is a perfect candidate to be remade: it offers room for improvement, is well thought of enough to engender some nostalgic goodwill, but is nowhere near a classic and thus unlikely to provoke cries of outrage over tarnishing an already perfect film.

This new Crazies wisely takes a page from another better-than-expected Romero remake, Dawn of the Dead (and I don’t just mean the usage of Johnny Cash in the opening), and avoids slavish adherence to Romero’s film, instead taking the name and basic concept only, reinventing the tale with new characters and new set-pieces. So Evans City, Pennsylvania becomes Ogden Marsh, Iowa (not sure why that change – did the filmmakers think Iowa was inherently scarier than Pennsylvania?) – the sort of small farming town where everyone knows everyone and they all seem to get along. That is, at least, until the (supposedly) reformed town drunk wanders onto the field of a high school baseball game, brandishing a shotgun. Town sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) tries to reason with the man, but in the end is forced to fatally shoot him. We don’t see for sure, but I’m betting the rest of the game was called off.

Anyway, Dutton doesn’t take his actions lightly, and his conflicted emotions aren’t helped any by some of the townsfolk not necessarily agreeing with what he did (like the dead man’s family, for instance). Both Dutton’s loyal deputy Russell (Joe Anderson) and his town-doctor wife Judy (Radha Mitchell) assure him he did the right thing, but he barely has any time to deal with his own feelings before another town resident murders his family and then calmly starts mowing the lawn. Now convinced that something major bad is up in their town, David and Russell follow-up on a previously ignored report of a possible plane crash, and eventually discover that an aircraft did indeed crash into a nearby river, and in the process apparently contaminated the town’s water supply with…well, nothing good, that’s for sure.

For reasons the movie oddly doesn’t offer, David doesn’t warn the rest of the town not to drink the water – instead he just takes it upon himself to shut off the water supply. But by that point it’s too little, too late, and it isn’t long before gas-mask wearing military swoop into Ogden Marsh, looking to contain the now rapidly spreading insanity-causing virus. Mistaking Judy’s pregnancy-related fever for early symptoms, the soldiers strap her on a gurney and quarantine her with other obvious infected. This sends David on a quest back into town to save his wife, and eventually the two – joined also by Russell and Judy’s young assistant Becca (Danielle Panabaker) – are working their way back out of town. This turns out to be significantly more difficult, for a few reasons. 1) The town is now overrun with the murderous infected “crazies.” 2) There are also the armed military units around, who have clearly been told to prevent anyone, infected or otherwise, from getting out of there. 3) The survivors aren’t even all that sure that they themselves are not infected, which leads to an uneasy tension between the group as they are all forced to consider if one of them might lose it at any second.



That’s really all you need to know, as the main bulk of the film is just these four characters and the nightmarish situations they encounter on their journey. In other words, the film’s structure is little more than a series of set-pieces in which our heroes endure bloody encounters with their raging former town-folk and try to evade the trigger happy soldiers that are attempting to tie up loose ends. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s a lean, mean movie, effectively building suspense in the first act, but then hammering along from scene to scene once the main characters begin their hellish gauntlet across town. Once all hell breaks loose, the film barely stops for a breath. This will upset some, but there’s a definite place for this kind of approach when done well, and I think Eisner (along with writers Scott Kosar and Ray Wright) has done it well, keeping the film’s momentum tightly paced from beginning to end. There’s not much wasted time here, with little boring exposition to slow things down. Sure, call it short-attention-span theater all you want, but hell, at the end of the day it’s a horror thrill-ride called The Crazies. Economical storytelling is far from the worst approach.

In fact, this no-nonsense approach to the narrative is the film’s biggest improvement over the original. Romero – never one to pass up a chance to present authority figures as evil and/or incompetent – fashioned his film as a dual narrative, cutting back and forth between his survivor characters and scenes of the military men responsible for the virus, trying in vain to figure out how to contain it. The problem with that is we just don’t really care about the people behind the problem. The audience’s real emotional connection to the story lies with the people affected by the virus. The new film’s decision to present the government forces at work as something of a faceless entity might seem simplistic, but it also keeps the focus on the central characters that we actually give a damn about and are supposed to be rooting for. It’s enough for us to just know that there are asshole bureaucrats out there planning to eliminate the town and cover up their mistake (and, oh, we know it). We don’t actually need to see them having meetings and filing the paperwork.

The other good thing about staying focused on this small batch of characters is that at least two of the performances are actually the best thing about the movie. I’m talking about Timothy Olyphant and Joe Anderson as David and Russell, respectively. Olyphant follows up his show-stealing role in last year’s underappreciated A Perfect Getaway with another “why the hell isn’t this guy a bigger star” performance here. Olyphant might not have the widest range of all the actors out there, but he has an undeniably charismatic screen-presence that really shines through in certain types of roles, and I’d say this one fits that bill. Dutton could have been presented as nothing more than a stoic do-gooder, but Olyphant instead taps into the guy’s horror and regret over the terrible things he is constantly forced to do. I’d say he carries the movie on his shoulders, but that would be a disservice to Joe Anderson, who is given the film’s most interesting part in Russell. Starting off as a one-note character (loyal deputy), Russell eventually undergoes a hell of a change, as his actions become more and more crazed as the film goes on. The movie plays with whether this is a result of Russell being infected or simply a natural by-product of a normal man being pushed too far – despite my earlier praise of the film’s pacing, I do wish it had allowed a bit more time to explore this angle, particularly since what Anderson does get to bring to the table is so excellent.

Meanwhile, the two female roles are unfortunately far less developed. Radha Mitchell is just fine as Judy, but despite setting her up as a doctor, the film never really lets her medical expertise come into play in order to make her an important figure (there are a couple brief moments where she gets to figure out things before the guys, but I guess I just thought there should have been a few moments where her knowledge actually saves them or proves vital at a crucial moment). The filmmakers are clearly so interested in David that they are content to just let Judy exist as little more than “David’s wife.” At least she’s given the bare bones of a character to play, though. That’s more than can be said for Danielle Panabaker, whose Becca might just be one of the most pointless characters I have ever seen in a horror film. It’s not that Panabaker underplays it…she just isn’t really given anything to play. It’s an entirely thankless role. Her connection to the rest of the characters is so tenuous and undeveloped that you can’t help but figure out where her fate eventually lies.

So, no, it’s certainly not a perfect film. Besides the underdeveloped female roles, the film has a few other unfortunate flaws, most notably its disappointing over-reliance on lazy, loud jump scares. Nearly every review I have read or seen of this film – both positive and negative – has criticized this aspect. It would be nice to think that maybe this will mean an end to this sort of all-too-easy boo-moment in the genre…but as long as they keep making the majority of the teenagers paying to see these films jump out of their seats, I’m sure filmmakers will continue to fall back on them.

There is also some rather wonky logic at work in this movie. For instance, why do our heroes, who seem to understand that they are under constant surveillance (or are at least trying to avoid that possibility), continually walk down the middle of the town’s roads in bright daylight with no cover? Or how the heck did only one person in the town hear a plane crash into the river? The other confusing element has to do with the sickness itself, which isn’t very consistent throughout the movie. Some of the infected are presented as little more than mindless zombies, while others are clever enough to work together and set traps, and at a least a couple seem to be little more than extremely pissed-off versions of their former selves. I don’t necessarily mind the idea that the virus effects different people in different ways…but maybe the movie should have worked a little harder at clarifying that, instead of making it seem like the virus only effects you in the way that the script currently needs it to. Likewise, there is a moment where it is suggested that the virus may have gone airborne, but this is never paid off one way or the other. So…what the hell? Why bother mentioning something like that if you’re not gonna at least pretend to explore it. Oh, and to wrap up my complaints section, I also thought Eisner’s usage of overhead satellite surveillance footage was a little corny. I get what he’s going for – to let us know that the town has been under constant watch all along. But, if that’s the case, then why are our heroes able to get around in town as much as they are? Why are they only seen some times, but not all the time? If the film had just left those satellite images out, I wouldn’t be forced to nitpick on that issue.

In the end, though, my complaints are mostly nitpicking, and rarely get in the way of the movie’s straightforward enjoyment. As is the case with plenty of other horror films I enjoy, The Crazies knows what kind of movie it is, and doesn’t go out of its way to try to be anything else. That’s not to say there’s no intelligence here. A common but misguided complaint from fans of Romero’s original is that this new version doesn’t contain the same sort of social criticism and relevance as the 1973 version, which played with Vietnam and Kent State imagery in order to reflect the nation’s unease at the time. Sure, Eisner’s Crazies doesn’t deal in the exact same sort of symbolism, but this is a different era, after all. The new film hasn’t completely abandoned any subtext – it’s just redirected it. Eisner’s film is obviously more interested in the deadly virus aspect of the story than that of the “government is bad” overtone – which is perfectly understandable in our paranoid bird-flu/swine-flu culture. But the distrust of government is clearly still present. Like I said, it might even be made more effective by keeping those in charge at a distance, rather than letting us in on their minute-by-minute dealings. And, hey, at least this film doesn’t offer up anything as heavy-handed as the scene in Romero’s original where a priest immolates himself in a direct and all-too-obvious reference to Buddhist priests in Vietnam.

At the end of the day, the new Crazies still has an inkling of that Romero-brand social commentary, but it’s not looking to hammer you over the head with it. This just goes back to its more character-driven approach. We’re experiencing everything through the perspectives of our hero characters. They sure as hell don’t give a damn about stopping for a moment to ponder why this is happening, or what the greater implications are. All they’re worried about is getting the hell out of there, and the movie wants us to vicariously experience their confused panic. Eisner’s main concern is entertaining. And thanks to a couple memorable performances and quite a few well-done set-pieces (an exhilarating attack at a car wash, in particular, is the film’s highlight sequence), he does just that.

It’s a shame those with a knee-jerk “all remakes are bad” mentality will cast this one aside with most of the other admittedly bad remakes that have come along in recent years. Personally, I think this new Crazies is at the high-end of the remake trend, joining films like Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead and Alexandre Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes. If we can accept that the horror remake isn’t going anywhere (and let’s face it, it isn’t), then a film like this is really the best we can hope for – a well-made modernization that pays tribute to its source material while reinventing it (fans of the original will want to take note of the actress on the bicycle that passes Olyphant), and that focuses on the best elements of the original while casting aside those things that didn’t work. Romero himself has praised this new Crazies. It’s doubtful that will win over those already predisposed to hating it, but at least it’s nice to know the man himself had as much fun watching this as I did.

The 411: One of the better horror remakes to come along in recent years, Breck Eisner's "re-imagining" of George A. Romero's The Crazies pushes the original's Vietnam-era inspired paranoia to the side and instead ramps up the action and survival aspect. This actually turns out to be to the film's benefit, since despite some "don't think too hard about it" moments and an over-reliance on jump scares, the film works thanks to very good performances from its two male leads and a breathless narrative that never loses steam.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]