The Crazies (2010)
The Crazies (2010)
Production Company: Overture Films and Participant Media present in association with Imagenation, an Aguilar/Gergaris production
Producers: Michael Aguilar, Dean Gerogaris, Rob Cowan
Executive Producers: George A Romero, Jeff Skoll, Jonathan King
Director: Breck Eisner
Screenplay: Scott Kosar, Ray Wright, based on the 1973 motion picture by George A Romero
Cinematographer: Maxime Alexandre
Editor: Billy Fox
Music: Mark Isham
Production Designer: Andrew Menzies
Costume Designer: George L Little
Visual Effects: Trevor Adams/Zoic Studios, David Burton/With a Twist Studio, Tim Carras/Comen VFX, Mike Uguccioni
Special Makeup Design: Erik Porn, Robert Hall, Jonah Levy, Toby Sells (Almost Human, Inc), Ron Thornton
Second Unit Director: EJ Foerster
Sound Designer/Editor: Jeremy Peirson
Stunts: Chris Carnel/EJ Foerster
Running Time: 101 mins.
Locations: Iowa, Georgia, USA
Budget: circa $25 million
Cast: Timothy Olyphant (David Dutton), Radha Mitchell (Judy Dutton), Joe Anderson (Russell Clank), Danielle Panabaker (Becca Darling), Christie Lynn Smith (Deardra Farnum), Brett Rickaby (Bill Farnum), Preston Bailey (Nicholas), John Aylward (Mayor Hobbs), Joe Reegan (Pvt Billy Babcock), Glenn Morshower (Intelligence Officer), Justin Miles (Scotty McGregor), Larry Cedar (Ben Sandborn), Gregory Sporleder (Travis Quinn), Mike Hickman (Rory Hamill), Lisa K Wyatt (Peggy Hamill), Justin Welborn (Curt Hammil), Chet Grissom (Kevin Miller), Tahmus Rounds (Nathan), Brett Wagner (Jesse), Alex Van (Red), Anthony Winters (Town Pastor), Frank Hoyt Taylor (Mortician Charles Finley), Marian Green (Mrs McGregor), E Roger Mitchell (Fire Chief Tom).
Synopsis: Ogden March, Iowa. Following an incident at a High School baseball game, it becomes clear that inhabitants of an isolated farming community are slowly turning into violent psychopaths. After the discovery of a downed government plane, Sherrif David Dutton, his wife Judy, and deputy Russell Clank realize that the infection is spreading through the town's water supply, just as an armed force of government troops seal off the area and begin arresting or killing everyone who lives there.
Review: Breck Eisner has to overcome more hurdles than most on his sophomore big screen effort, saddled with the "son of former Disney chief, Michael Eisner" moniker and all the intimations of nepotism that entails, he presided over two of 2005's more spectacular failures, the overblown $130 million Matthew Matthew McConaughey/Penelope Cruz flop, Sahara and, as Executive producer, the ill-fated Ray Bradbury adaptation A Sound of Thunder (filmed in 2002 and released with unfinished effects after production company Franchise Pictures filed for Chapter 11 following a messy Battlefield Earth-related court battle). It's a pleasure to report, then that The Crazies is a perfectly serviceable remake of George A Romero's 1973 original that delivers in post 28 Days Later thrills, even if it lacks Romero's political bite.
Blessed with four of the better genre actors in Timothy Olyphant (A Perfect Getaway), Radha Mitchell (Pitch Black, Silent Hill), Joe Anderson (The Ruins), and Danielle Panabaker (Friday the 13th), the script by Scott Kosar (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Amytyville Horror remakes, The Machinist) and Ray Wright (the Pulse remake and Christian Alvart's MIA in the USA Case 39) shifts the focus from 1973's pregnant nurse Judy (albeit promoting her to Doctor) on to her husband David (now the town sheriff) and his deputy Clank (a role closer to the original) but, in one potentially fatal alteration, leaves the authorities as largely faceless automatons, with the exception of a panicky Private and a cameo from Glenn Morshower ("24", the Transformers movies) as an intelligence Officer.
Romero's original, steeped in post-Vietnam and Watergate paranoia and the realization that our own government was as much the enemy as Communism, was a ragged patchwork of effective scenes that lacked the potency of both Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the film that followed it, Martin (1977), remaining unreleased outside the US until 1978–9. While Eisner is more in control of his material and does a creditable job of matching some of the parenthetical high points (a befuddled pensioner repeatedly asking "Did Peter call?" is particularly effective), the sense of a town at war with itself as the authorities descend is mostly jettisoned, along with any potential satire of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina (a surprise from Participant Media, who normally produce films with socially relevant content), in favor of roller-coaster action and gore. Even at its best, nothing here matches up to the scene from the original, featuring an unsuspecting soldier and a sweet little old lady with a knitting needle.
What we do get, courtesy of Alexandre Aja's favorite cinematographer, Maxime Alexandre (Haute Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) is an Hitchockian sense of isolation and vulnerability in an open landscape (the location switch from Pittsburgh to Iowa is inspired), albeit in suitably grainy 16mm-style visuals, and Eisner's deft hand with a set-piece, particularly in an episode in which the two females are threatened by a pitchfork-wielding headmaster whilst tied to gurneys, and well-handled scenes in a child's nursery, a car wash, and an oil change pit. These, allied with an elegiac score by Mark Isham (The Mist), make for a breezy 100 minutes and one of the better horror remakes of recent years, even if the film throttles back on the nihilism and doesn't quite reach the heights of gut-wrenching, primal emotion that Eisner – and fans of the original – might have hoped for.
