THE CRAZIES (REMAKE) 2010 REVIEW

After the success of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, George A Romero turned his hand to another sort of zombie  film, the plague drama, THE CRAZIES. That was in 1973, so it was inevitable that i would be given the remake treatment. Come 2010 and the remake gets a release...is it any good? find out after the jump.

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The film revolves around a man made biological weapon that is accidentally dumped into the river of a small midwestern town, The people who contract the virus become mad and homocidal. The military are quick to come in and try and cover up the problem, but the town sheriff and his deputy decided to rescue the sheriff's mrs who has been taken to a special Quarantine zone as she has a high temperature. They evade the heavily armed military and rescue the woman and a girl. After the military quarantine goes tits up the four survivers have to survive in the town over run with crazed, murderous individuals, while unsure of the sanity of the deputy.

Is it any good?
Yes and no. As a stand alone film it's quite entertaining, not as gory as it could have been and the allegorical themes are missing but it's still an enjoyable film none the less. As a remake it's nothing compared to the 1973 original. The original was eerie, atmospheric, quite brutal and the way it was filmed (16mm) gave it more of a documentary feel and seemed more realistic. The original had an ANTI-WAR theme running through it and showed the military as foolish and abusive, the original had an incredibly bleak ending with many of the main characters getting killed off. The remake has that sort of hey-we-can-do-a-sequel-if-we-want ending. And in true hollywood stile, much like the end of Resident Evil Apocalypse, the U.S use the one method that has been proven to remove problems, they nuke the city and hey guess what, the sheriff and his pregnant wife manage to out drive a fucking nuke blast in a fucking 4 ton truck. They don't even seem to be bothered about the huge amounts of radiation that are attacking their bodies.

Theres my little rant over the film it self, now onto the cast...

The cast of the remake is actually pretty good. Timothy Olyphant is good as the sheriff, he's a sort of underated actor and thankfully the God-awful Hitman film hasn't seemed to hinder his career. I've liked him since i first saw him in Scream 2. Radha Mitchell is also pretty good as Timothy's wife, the pregnant doctor. But instead of playing the character as strong female character the wife is like most women in horror films, they scream and hide, but in this we don't get a nip flash. For me the best actor in the film was Joe Anderson who played Clank the deputy, he slowly became deranged due to the infection and before he became totally mad he sacrifices himself so Tim and Radha can escape. Id like to see him in more films. There were two actors in this that made the film even better, the first being Justin Welborn who i think is an astounding actor, check out Dance Of The Dead or The Signal for him and the second is Glen Moreshower, who although not a recognisable name is very recognisable to fans of the show 24 where he played Agent Aaron Pierce, head of the Presidents secret service, for 7 seasons. He pops up here as government agent.

The direction is pretty much like every horror film to come out in the last few years, well shot in the dark, well shot in the day, good angles for the kills etc...The film is directed by Breck Eisner who previously made the TV movie Thoughtcrimes (good) and the action film Sahara (meh). The problem i have with all these hollywood horror film is that they're all samey, they look the same, sound the same and they make that they're the scariest film ever made, that my friends is bollocks, it's all style over substance these days.

But please don't let my review put you off the film because like i said it's still an enjoyable enough filmfor what it is....

FILM: 6/10