Horror Movie Review: The Crazies

The Crazies

Starring: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, and Joe Anderson

Directed by: Breck Eisner

Written by: Scott Kosar and Ray Wright based on George Romero's 1973 movie

Production Companies: Overture Films, Participant Media, Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ, and Penn Station

Release Date: February 23, 2010



Remaking a horror film, well, any film really, is tricky business. Generally speaking you want to honor the original, stay true to it to a certain degree, and at the same time separate your remake from it and still be enjoyed. Even if a director can accomplish this, there are some who will dismiss the remake entirely and disregard its existence. Others might be willing to go into it expecting to be disappointed, annoyed, frustrated, or even angered and ready to tell everyone how the remake is inferior. But Hollywood seems to have no problem with doing remakes so they must be able to get enough business from those curious but sceptical types and those who have never seen the original and may not even know it's a remake to make just about any movie older than 10 years worthy game for a remake.

I personally try to watch a remake as a beast unto itself, but I do tend to compare to the original as well. It depends on how familiar I am with the film or how recently I saw it as to how much I compare the two. I knew Breck Eisner's The Crazies would get a lot of comparison with George Romero's The Crazies.

It's the same story: A plane carrying a military created bioweapon crashes near a small town. The citizens of the town become infected, one of the symptoms is insanity, and the military comes it to control the situation. A small group tries to avoid both "the crazies", the military, and the disease and escape the town.

Breck Eisner's The Crazies does a better job of creating a tense, horrific tone to the film. The crazies, with make-up to give them a diseased look, are scarier than original version. They are slower and more methodical about their insanity. It creates an intensity missing in George Romero's original.

But the ending to the original is more satisfying than the remake. In fact, the trials of the runaway group is generally more gripping. We get a little glimpse of Russell getting the Crazies, while in the original, his counterpart, Clank, was clearly infected. Judy's infection in the original gives George Romero's version more tragedy. Also, in the new version we have Becca, whose only purpose seems to be cannon fodder for the crazies where in the original Artie and his daughter Kathy add tension to the groups dynamic and more cases of the infection for us to see the progression of the disease.

But the one thing I really missed in the remake was the look at the military side of the events. Removing the close look at the military's procedures removes a lot of social commentary that made the original interesting.

Breck Eisner's The Crazies is scarier than the original, though I was a little disappointed in the uncreative craziness of the infected, and is a worthy horror film in its own right. The perfect version of the movie is somewhere between the two mixing the horror of the remake with the careful use of roles and the commentary in the original. So until that happens, in maybe a sequal since the remake left room for one, we'll have to watch both...and that's fine with me.

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