The Crazies: Film Review
Let’s face it. We live in an age of remakes. Hollywood, fresh out of ideas, continues to mine the movie well for all it’s worth – yeah, I’m talking to you Michael Bay.
With the odd exception, these re-imaginings melt into nothingness faster than an ice-cube in a cup of coffee.
The Crazies, a reinvention of the George A. Romero classic, is a bit of a loose canon, then, because it’s actually pretty good.
The Crazies: Cooler than the Fonze
Director Breck Eisner handles The Crazies with a level of confidence you wouldn’t expect from the guy who made Sahara. There is little evidence of this Matthew McConaughey misstep in his latest project. Instead, Eisner cobbles together a stylish take on an overused storyline.
The Crazies features Timothy Olyphant as the sheriff of an idyllic small-town in Middle America. One viral outbreak later and all mayhem breaks loose. The sheriff and his wife go on the lam as they vie to outsmart the infected townsfolk and trigger happy US military.
The Crazies taps into the political subtext of Romero’s original and updates it for the modern audience. Eisner substitutes Vietnam undertones with public paranoia, the terror threat and fear of our neighbours, chemical warfare and disease – it’s all very timely.
The Crazies: The American Dream Gone Wrong
As with so many movies, the crumbling of the American Dream is at the heart of The Crazies. It was also at the heart of Romero’s version.
It’s a testament to the zombie-tsar’s prophetic filmmaking abilities that the themes infused in his back-catalogue are still relevant today.
Perhaps Romero had a crystal ball? With that silky white beard he could quite easily pass for a wizard.
It’s more likely though that he simply knows what we all do: that as long as humans walk Planet Earth, strife will never be more than a few steps behind.
Some things, after all, never change.
The Crazies: A Remake Which Works
The Crazies is a competent enough genre film with enough blood flow to quench the thirst of ardent horror fans.
Well shot, paced and full of effective music cues, The Crazies is a welcome entry in the raft of substandard remakes to have emerged from Hollywood in recent years.
Rating: 
MrPotatoHead
11:20 pm, August 20, 2010
Love the first one and gonna watch remake tonight, can’t wait, let yuou know what think
spudhead
Robocock5000
12:26 pm, August 24, 2010
I really enjoyed the review but i would argue that The Crazies is an outbreak film not a zombie film!