By 2010 there were two things that were very much in vogue. The remake gravy train that had started in earnest in 2002 with The Ring exploded with remakes of foreign horror movies like The Grudge, REC, and a slew of others mixed in with remakes of American horror classics. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of Wax, The Hills Have Eyes, and even Friday the 13th had all been wildly successful and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The other thing was the return of the zombie flick which started around the same time. While I refuse to acknowledge the 28 Days series as zombie in nature it fits perfectly as today’s remake not only took inspiration from that grainy British masterpiece but is also a remake of one of the fathers of modern zombie films. It’s fitting that this movie bookends the 2000s as we would also get remakes of Romero’s second and third dead movies but also a new entry, Land of the Dead, from the master himself. The Crazies is a movie that probably wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card, but it was successful then seemingly forgotten. It mostly works and is one of the biggest black sheep remakes we have to offer.
George Romero changed the landscape of horror with his original Dead trilogy which have all been remade now. 2 of those, Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, are wonderful works that either respectfully recapture the mood and vibe as with Savini’s 1990 remake of Night or blow the doors off to make something new and just as entertaining as with the James Gunn penned and Zack Snyder directed 2004 remake of Dawn. Looking past that, the only really universally digestible entry in his catalogue is Creepshow. Everyone loves Creepshow and its probably the perfect anthology movie, but God help you if you try to remake it. Sequels and TV series, sure, but don’t just make a new Creepshow with the same stories. The rest of his movies are a double-edged sword to tackle because sure, its got his name all over it but also do people care? I love the idea of remakes for lesser-known films and stuff like Knightriders, Martin, and Monkey Shines, all could be ripe for a remake. Hell, give Mike Flanagan a miniseries on The Dark Half with his normal troupe of friends and collaborators.
The Crazies remake was actually in pre-production as early as may of 2004 when Paramount was throwing around the idea with screenwriter Scott Kosar who wrote the screenplay for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake the year prior. While the project would get delayed a bit, it was his script that would be used and in between that he would write independent horror gem The Machinist, the Amityville remake, and after this movie do a lot of good work in horror TV with Chapelwaite, Bates Motel, and an episode of The Haunting of Hill House. During the gap where it wasn’t being made, Ray Wright would also take a pass on the screenplay and both men are credited. Wright had written Case 39 in 2009 as well as the screenplay for the American remake of Pulse in 2006. The original director attached was Brad Anderson who had directed The Machinist as well as Session 9 but creative differences on where the movie would go had him leave the film and when Rogue picked up the rights for it, later Overture Films, the director would end up as Breck Eisner who would also do The Last Witch Hunter and had already done Sahara.
The cast would shake out with Justified and Deadwood star Timothy Olyphant as the lead playing the town sheriff (shocker and so out of character for him) with Radha Mitchell as his wife and Joe Anderson and Danielle Panabaker in the main supporting roles. Sheriff jokes aside, I love Olyphant and his characters, and he is a great everyman who really cares here. Apart from Scream 2 and Dreamcatcher, he also had Santa Clarita Diet, A Perfect Getaway, and Alien: Earth in our favorite genre. The Radha Mitchell role was originally going to be played by Elizabeth Banks but when the movie stalled, she made Slither and never returned. Mitchell is great in stuff like Pitch Black, Rogue, and Silent Hill among many others. Joe Anderson is one of those guys I don’t know by heart but was also excellent in the Hannibal show as Mason Verger and as another tragic character in The Ruins. Finally, Panabaker is a great actress, writer, and director who had a hard time surviving horror remakes as she also surprisingly doesn’t make it in Friday the 13th. She has made a hell of a career on The Flash and DC universe on TV but is great in everything and also showed up in stuff like Piranha 3D, The Ward, and a personal favorite, Sky High.
This movie does a good job of skirting the line between respecting the original and doing its own thing. It definitely looks and feels like a 2000s remake with its borderline nihilism as well as its sequel baiting. The military map section that shows up when tracking them even looks almost identical to that from the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. To explore why the movie works, and in some cases doesn’t work, as a remake let’s take a look at the original. The Crazies came out in 1973, which was before Dawn of the Dead but is definitely a precursor to one of the big themes of that movie. No, not consumerism, but how the world will fall apart and how people will be the biggest threat to other people. The original opens with a man killing his wife and burning down his home before the military comes in to contain what we find out is a toxin named Trixie which will either kill you outright or turn you into, well, a crazy. While we see all the disorganized madness that the military causes by not talking to each other or seemingly having different goals in mind, the main characters we follow are two firemen and one of their girlfriends. They eventually find a teen and her father, and we slowly watch them die, go insane, or have to try and survive any way necessary by evading, killing, or hiding. Everyone except one man dies and we even see the potential cure be squashed by scared civilians and crazies alike. The cure is gone, and the virus has spread.
One of the things that the remake decided to do that I’m unsure of but absolutely understand is the switch to rather involved makeup. One of the requirements for the makeup team was to base everything on medical textbooks and get opinions from experts on how their sketches and molds looked. What ended up happening is that everyone that became infected sat in a chair beforehand for at least 3 hours. While it does look cool, I like the idea of the original where they turn ugly on the inside and the infection just drives them crazy. Part of that very well could have been due to the limited budget that Romero worked with but it’s deeply disturbing that they become psychopaths on the inside and yet look completely normal physically. The remake makes them almost look zombie-like which while cool, is also unnecessary. It was based on rabies and tetanus mostly and they were also altered in the editing stage helped out by the lighting and angels they were shot in. The idea was that they were to look stressed out but it just makes them slightly derivative of the 28 Days and Weeks Later infected.
That’s probably my only gripe with the movie, though, as it captures much of the heart of the original. Tim Olyphant plays Sheriff Dutton and in the opening scenes is forced to kill the town drunk when he brings a shotgun to the school’s baseball game. He regrets it and feels terrible, even going to speak to the widow and their son. There isn’t much down time as we get another crazy husband taking out his family, the discovery of the crashed military plane and water supply argument, and a scene in the morgue that shows how not okay things are in the sleepy town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa. The military arrives but they don’t have any personality like they do in the original. Instead, they are the cold and emotionless soldiers of a government that already gave up on the town. While we don’t see the military side trying to find a cure or argue against the government’s decision, it does give us more time to explore how the town is reacting and get into some of the best tension scenes in the movie.
My favorite of those is when the military pop-up base has been overrun and David’s very pregnant wife Judy is stuck strapped to a bed. An infected character from before comes in and quietly and disturbingly plunges a pitchfork into several trapped people on their beds. Judy and her assistant Becca are saved and the 4 attempt to flee the town but are beset by crazy infected citizens, the military, and their own paranoia. We then get maybe the saddest part of the movie where at a truck stop it is discovered that the military killed the people, they claimed they were helping escape, making one of the characters’ cowardly decision to leave his family when David refuses even more heartbreaking and horrible. The military was never there to save anyone and in fact is going to nuke the town anyway. Becca is killed quickly and without remorse at a carwash while Deputy Russell, slowly showing signs of infection the last hour or so, makes probably the most human choice in the movie and sacrifices himself so that David and Judy can escape. While they get a truck and out-drive the nuclear explosion, they are shown to be headed Cedar Rapids just as a military computer shows a quarantine protocol is to happen there too. No cure and seemingly no hope.
While The Crazies did well at the box office with a pull of 55 million on its 20-million-dollar budget, it was forgotten just as quickly. It’s a shame too because it’s a great example of how to do a remake right. You keep what made the interesting so good, in this case the human vs human element and the virus that makes you crazy but change enough to make it different. While the first one is slower and more of a downer, the remake keeps the nihilism, masked by so many 2000s era horrors ending in a similar way, and keeps the audience on their toes. You really aren’t sure who, if anyone, is going to make it to the credits. The vision is different, but the message stays the same. If something like this happens, the virus or a massive explosion may be the best way to go because humanity will not help itself. Watch both the movies back-to-back and let me know what you think is better. For my money, while the original has more to say, this remake is one of the best and was stricken with the black sheep virus before it really had a chance to breathe. Maybe stick with bottled water for a while.
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