Zombies flip their lids

The Crazies is a competent genre film

By Alex Mugford

The Crazies Starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Danielle Panabaker, and Joe Anderson Alliance 101 mins Rated 18A

The serene farming town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa is the picture of All-American bliss – until a poisonous toxin makes its way into the town’s water supply, slowly turning its friendly bumpkins into creepy, zombie-like murderers. Trying to make sense of it all is Sheriff David Dutton (Olyphant), who discovers that Ogden Marsh is being used as ground zero for a military operation to stop the infection by exterminating all of its residents.

After other people in the community go off on murderous rampages of their own, the military quarantines the whole town, including Dutton and his pregnant doctor wife Judy (Mitchell). With the help of his trusty deputy, Russell (Joe Anderson), David breaks his wife out of quarantine, and they set out to evade crazies and commandos alike by blasting their way to freedom. Picked clean of new ideas, Hollywood is throwing another horror remake upon us. The Crazies is a remake of the low-budget George A. Romero 1971 flick of the same name. However, The Crazies seemed ripe for remake. After all, the George Romero original isn’t one of his best and that’s what we should be remaking – films with room for improvement. This new version of The Crazies, cannily directed by Breck Eisner, may not break new ground, but like Zach Snyder’s 2004 reworking of Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead, it treads familiar territory with rather considerable dexterity.

Like the Romero epic, there are disturbing family scenarios played out such as a father who loses his mind and slowly and methodically murders his wife and kid for no reason. The Crazies is restrained enough for the squeamish and yet gory enough for horror fans, thanks to Eisner’s measured sense for how much blood and guts are truly necessary to freak out his audience. A few cheap scares could have been clipped out with no loss of tension, but for the most part I was satisfied with the horror.

Romero’s overstated anti-Vietnam War sentiment in the original is less apparent in the remake, yet there is a strong anti-government message lying at the root of the plot. There’s hint of something more in this paranoid parable about the United States’ current military agenda which is most apparent in a scene where a remorseful soldier insists that he “didn’t sign up to shoot unarmed civilians.”

Timothy Olyphant plays his character well, but the character development is weak and border-line cliché. Radha Mitchell as David’s pregnant wife Judy only exists to spew medical talk and give Olyphant his hero’s motivation. This film offers escapism without being stupid. It takes the audience on a ride while still giving them something to talk about on the drive home from the movies.

2.5 out of 4 stars

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