The Crazies

Breck Eisner’s new version of a relatively underwhelming 1973 George Romero original was one of the less obvious remakes of a crop of re-done horror hits from back in the day. The likes of Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the upcoming Nightmare On Elm Street all had ‘common business sense’ written all over them. In the sense that if you were going to make the same film again, with or without a modern day slant, redoing the big ones seemed to make the most box office dollars. And so it has been the case in most examples of the past couple of years, not least with the two previously mentioned titles already released themselves to above average financial expectations, if not always critical acclaim.

So that said, The Crazies would seem like a bit of a head-scratcher. Not notorious for any kind of huge financial success at the time, nor garnering enough critical attention to warrant a warm-hearted remake, this would appear therefore to be a project of personal passion for Eisner.

And this is certainly how it comes across. With attention to detail and characters that are too often found lacking in other horror remakes, Eisner appears to have given his audience a nice mix of set pieces, story and credible acting performances from the majority of his cast.

Head of which are Timothy Olyphant (David Dutton) and Rahda Mitchell (Judy Dutton), playing the local law enforcement and good lady doctor respectively for an as yet small, inconsequential anytown in backwater, USA. When one of the locals ambles silently onto the baseball diamond during a local game brandishing his shotgun, David is forced to intervene with tragic and final consequences.

This is only the tip of the iceberg and while the rest of the town are going slightly but most definitely bonkers, both David and Judy begin to understand that there may be more to this than at first meets the eye. They are not alone in suspecting that something may be up and with the benefit of satellite imagery, we get the impression that Big Brother has also noticed the unfortunate events in this once sleepy town. To tell you anymore about the reasons behind the craziness would ruin some of the story for you, but all too soon, in come the cavalry (all guns and gas masks) in the dead of night to quarantine the town and everybody in it. What they are going to do then is anybody’s guess as chaos ensues and the apparently infected are tied to gurneys and left, rather heartlessly, to go quietly insane in a room with other ‘likeminded’ individuals.

And it is at this stage that Eisner really turns up the jumps. What starts out as a quite an amiable bunch of characters going about their everyday business, offending nobody unduly, turns into a fight for survival in a town full of people that used to be their friends, but are now ready to rip out their throats as soon as look at them.

This is now familiar territory for horror fans as virus outbreaks and zombies are a staple diet these days so it is fair to say you know what you’re in for when things go all batshit. The script is often cheesy and you do wonder if Mitchell particularly managed to get through some of her scenes without cracking a smile at some of her character’s’ utterances, but on the whole Eisner shows enough inventiveness to make ‘The Crazies’ a fun-filled fright night for fans of the genre. This is no ‘Zombieland’ as it falls way short in the ‘cool’ stakes, but nonetheless entertains without apology.