Review – The Crazies
Saturday, July 17th, 2010
I’m a Romero fan. There, it’s out in the open. No, not Caesar Romero! I’m a fan of the Zombie film catalog created by the one and only George Romero. One of his lesser-known works, The Crazies, has been remade into a slick, Hollywood feature and the result is much like the other remakes of Romero’s works. It’s classier, faster, and more entertaining than the original in a lot of ways but it’s also been stripped of its political satire.
Romero’s work is many things to many people. Some folks just like the gore, others his commentary on modern life in America. Sometimes his films work (Dawn of the Dead) and sometimes they don’t (Diary of the Dead) but they almost always end up on someone’s short list of horror classics. Is this rep deserved? Probably not. Romero is more of a by-the-numbers filmmaker than you’d think, and he really doesn’t have the auteur chops needed for the capital-D Director title. He’s more like the Kevin Smith of horror, serving up some interesting stories and writing via serviceable, if somewhat bland, direction. That’s where Hollywood comes in.
Romero’s movies provide the near-perfect starting points for modern productions. Even Romero sidekick Tom Savini directed a technically superior production of Night of the Living Dead in 1990. There’s something about these films that makes you actually want them to have been technically better. The ideas are there but the presentation is somewhat lacking. What better fodder for Hollywood remakes could you find?
I’m sure this is one of the things that drove the creative team behind The Crazies. This is a top-notch production, no B-movie look and feel here. The cast delivers great performances, the script is tight, and the visuals are beautifully rendered. The trouble is that while this film is much more fun to watch than the original, it has absolutely nothing to say. Much like the excellent Dawn of the Dead remake helmed by Zack Snyder, director Breck Eisner (Michael Eisner’s son) has managed to ramp up the heartrate of the patient but he’s also inadvertently removed its soul.
Romero’s original is largely about the military and the way its members do or don’t follow the orders they’ve been given. It’s about the government and how they treat their constituency in the face of a viral emergency. It’s about everything that pissed Romero off in 1973 and it gets a little tiring, to be honest. The remake is the exact opposite. It’s scary and exciting and beautiful, but in the end it says nothing. I think there’s an absolutely brilliant film that exists as a marriage of both of these.
As a side note, I should mention that huge chunks of the new Crazies were shot in and around my home town of Macon, Georgia. Maybe it’s just the heat and humidity but Georgia seems to be attracting more than its fair share of Zombie films these days (Yes, I realize The Crazies isn’t technically a zombie movie, but let’s not pull the wool over our own eyes, okay?).
