It would be a contortionist feat to find much relevance or depth amongst all the gloss and noise in Breck Eisner’s (Sahara) paint-by-numbers update of this somewhat obscure George Romero flick, The Crazies. The original was in 1973, but like most of the Zombie Ambassador’s work, it is getting a modest budget make-over (with vampires in vogue at the moment, wither 1977s Martin?) that is all spit and polish in the technical department at the unfortunate cost of, well, actually saying much of anything. Let us be blunt, there is not one damn thing in The Crazies that was not handled significantly smarter, swifter and more stylish in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later.
*Some Spoilers Ahead*
The small ‘mainstreet’ town of Ogden Marsh that is placed under violent and brutal quarantine after a virus (keeping the original’s moniker, Trixie) accidentally gets in the water supply and within about 48 hours, the locals into ‘fast zombies’ with enough brains to target their own loved ones before moving onto the general populace. The many uninfected citizens are either butchered by their own infected family members or they are rounded up and brutalized by the anonymously threatening Hazmat suited military or the gun totin’ red-necks that use the chaos as an excuse to start shootin’ whomever they damn-well please. Like Romero’s Dead movies, this is a lesson that humanity under pressure is not very adept at team work and the situation rapidly spirals out of control. The voice of reasonable violence is Sheriff Dutton who is introduced by shooting the town drunk who happens to be wielding a fire arm during towns highschool baseball game. Making the call of when to shoot the locals (or army-guy interlopers) is I suppose the message of the film. Being that it is an action driven horror film, that action is taken pretty much whenever possible. Gathering his pregnant doctor-wife (Radha Mitchell) and his trusty wise-cracking deputy, Dutton aims to get out of dodge by whatever means necessary.
The actors acquit themselves nicely in between all the running around. Olyphant who is the American Voice of Reason(tm) channels some of that Deadwood intensity, but also has a halfway decent repartee with the townsfolk. A scene where the Sheriff casually confronts a man who is abandoning his wife, in the wake of the chaos, suggests the Sheriff do the same, Olyphant’s curt response is one of the better moments in the film. Sheriff Duttons no nonsense ‘lets just keep going because we have to’ is a certainly sums up ‘Merican can-do spirit even if there is a bit of a dark streak down the middle. Joe Anderson gets the competent-yet-possibly-infected sidekick role and he is fun to watch, though the picture abandons the character (“I may not be worldly, but I have plans”) for the usual save-the-hero sacrifice and the films one potential wild card disappears into the ether. Radha Mitchell, no stranger to the genre with leading roles in Rogue, Pitch Black and Silent Hill, is unfortunately relegated to second (or third) fiddle, wandering into dark places and/or being saved by her man at the last second.
A final act, wide-screen firebombing is a pretty but less potent of an image than similar detonations in Watchmen, Indiana Jones IV, or as mentioned previously, 28 Weeks Later. A Johnny Cash song during the opening credits (which Zak Snyder did better in his own Romero update, Dawn of the Dead; perhaps a more appropriate opening number both for the audience and the film would have been The Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I go?), a Joss Whedon/J.J. Abrams styled prologue-teaser followed by “2 Days Earlier…” and many more familiar elements only underscore just how much on autopilot the filmmaking is here. Call me crazy (nyuck, nyuck), but perhaps that is what crashed the military plane in the first place, the jet-pilot was watching better infection horror-movies on his hacked military issue Tom-Tom.
Hey Kurt,
Great Review! I wish I had seen this last night with you guys but did not want to risk waiting in the rush line in that weather last night! lol
I still am going to see this movie…but have a feeling it’s just “okay.”
To be fair, this movie has a hard-on for aggressive action-y set pieces, and some of them are quite handsome and gory – the body count is exceptionally high for 100 minutes. But none of it adds up to anything, and you’ve seen nearly all of this before, so I feel it is perfectly fair to take the film to task for being so darn derivative.
Maybe more forgivable if it is was derivative and fun like Slither, Tremors, and Maximum Overdrive, that at least have the comedy or ridiculousness going for it. The Crazies does take itself a tad to serious for a film that isn’t saying much.
“The Crazies does take itself a tad to serious for a film that isn’t saying much.”
This got me thinking if this is really a bad thing. Can a horror flick go for violence and gore and take it completely serious and be really good without having something to say. I would have to say I don’t see why not but then I can’t come up with any great examples right now. Perhaps its cause I’m at work but I prefer horror that does take itself serious usually (yes there are a lot of exceptions). I can’t comment on The Crazies yet since I haven’t seen it but from what I’m taking away from your review and your comments I think I’m actually going to enjoy it a fair amount.
“Can a horror flick go for violence and gore and take it completely serious and be really good without having something to say.”
yes and no. Consider the film that is in essence being remade here. Was not the original a huge allegory of the late sixties early seventies reality check? How authority and society had gone, er, well, crazy and that shit hitting the fan was inevitable. If you are going to call your film after that film, well, perhaps you should make it relevant to the conversation in 2010.
You’ve be really stretching (hence the first line in my review) to try to work out a Patriot Act, or “all the money in Main-Street-America was dumped into the industrial-military complex which in the end nukes Main Street” – I feel embarrassed typing that in context to the crazies which doesn’t spend more than a nanosecond of its hyperactive jumping from set piece to set piece (and don’t get me started on those goofy over-head satellite camera high-tech-Bruckheimer-bullshit shots.)
I like martial arts films which are exactly what you say. But closer to home, I can handle that ‘no message at all vibe’ in something like Doomsday which is like an genre-film Ferris wheel. Heck, I can enjoy something even as wacky-empty as Kurt Wimmer’s brain dead Ultraviolet. And in all fairness, there are moments in 2010 The Crazies that are well done, and do work, and oi, have some visual wallop. But the tone (direction) of the film is beyond the sit-back and enjoy variety.
But you know what, I’ll take the Carpenter stuff like Escape From New York, Assault on P13, Prince of Darkness, which at least try to be saying something (even if it is simple and obvious) with their genre thrills. George Romero is the benchmark for this argument, yes, even something like Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead. (He went off the rails far worse than this update of The Crazies with Survival of the Dead, but heck, even that piece of shit is saying something…)
Oh, a good example of a genre film that says nothing yet offers a myriad of pleasures is the Wes Bently/Rachel Nichols horror thriller “p2″ which came out in 2007. Or Lucky McKee’s The Woods. Or Dog Soldiers. Or Ils (Them). (note that none of these films are capital “G” great though)
But The Crazies 2010 is not exactly that movie. Your mileage may vary.
Perhaps HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is the ultimate recent example. Just a thought.
I was just thinking of The Descent as being one. If it succeeds on the scare me then I’m good and it doesn’t need to have a point. The Strangers is a great horror movie in my mind (even though it did get shit upon by a lot of people). It takes itself seriously and doesn’t play it up for laughs. Laughs in horror are too easy of a cop out in my mind. Yes they can still be good movies (ie. Raimi) but they can also be annoying as hell (ie. Hatchet). I want to be riveted on the edge of my seat. This is completely separate from the movie having a point. I’m definitely not saying that movies are better or worse for having a point to them as a whole. It really comes down to just a case by case basis.
It seems that your saying horror can go campy or should go serious and be meaningful. Personally, I just want to be scared shitless in the safety of my home or local theatre.
As for it being a remake I do agree I do feel it needs to bring something to the table but it really doesn’t have to be more meaning based off of today’s society. I just picked up the original and plan on watching it after I see the remake. I’m sure I’ll have more to say then but if it works on action or scares or gross then cool.
After watching the new version I don’t know if I would call it lazy but it is definitely safe. And as someone who was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, I did get a bit of enjoyment out of the fact that it was viewed as their savior if they could only reach it. Clearly they never actually went there.
As for horror movies being serious without a point I think there are plenty, but they need to be scary to pull it off and The Crazies simply isn’t scary.