Remakes can be a touchy topic, especially for horror fans. I begrudgingly came to the conclusion a few years ago that remakes will happen regardless of if I want them to. And the originals will always be the originals. Even though I would rather see Jason return to Crystal Lake for a dozen more murder sprees, each with increasing degrees of ridiculousness, before starting over from scratch, I must admit that I did check out the remake/reboot. And it was fine. Kind of meh. Jason X was actually more fun. Don't tell anybody.
On the other hand, some movies have great premises but could benefit from a modernized retelling. The Crazies definitely fits the bill. George Romero's original has a cool premise: a government created weaponized virus gets unleashed on a small town after the plane transporting it crashes into the local water supply. It suffers from a low budget and the general George Romero heavy-handedness when it comes to portraying the government and military. Romero was never very subtle with his allegories. It's a pretty good movie, and I would never tell you not to see something. Like I said, the originals are always the originals. Remakes should never be considered replacements.
If you are going to remake something, the best thing to do is to bring something fresh to the table. The new The Crazies keeps the same plot but removes the government point of view from the story. Instead of the audience seeing the town's people trying to cope and survive and then seeing what the military honchos are doing to keep control in alternating scenes, we are only presented with the locals' perspective. In a way it makes the military presence scarier. We as an audience are as much in the dark as the characters that we are watching. Which is why I am surprised that they didn't try to recreate the most jarring scene of the original in which men in haz-mat suits with machine guns are kicking in doors and pulling families out of their beds. They do show some children being taken from their parents in the remake, but not on their home turf, not from their own beds. Like I said, Romero doesn't do subtlety.
The remake also benefits from modern special effects and a budget with which to utilize them. The movie looks gritty and bloody but also polished when it needs to be. If you are a fan of virus movies or zombie movies, you'll know what to expect. This isn't the most original movie but it works well and is aware of exactly what it is. It opens with Johnny Cash singing over the credits. Immediately I am reminded of the opening credits of the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead (another Romero remake). I think the reference was intentional. The action and suspense get started and the pace is quick as our Sheriff puts the pieces of the plot together so that we can get down to some more action.
Even though this a remake of a George Romero movie, I felt a stronger presence of Jaws references than Romero references. Director Breck Eisner is clearly a Jaws fan. We have a widow slapping our police chief like Mrs. Kintner and a fun scene with the mayor thinking of dollars over safety. He may as well have told the chief that, "Amity is a summer town . . . we need summer dollars."
I was along for the ride and accepted everything that the movie threw at me. Except for one thing. Timothy Olyphant gets stabbed through the hand. It's brutal. But it never seems to hurt in the subsequent scenes as he steers cars and shoots guns without wincing. It's stupid that it bothers me, but he basically throws a bandaid on it and forgets about it. It hurts the "realism," even in a movie like this. I'm glad that's off my chest. Now I can finally move on with my life.
The Crazies was a lot of fun and has some pretty good scares. Check out the original too. I'll give this today's arbitrary rating of 17 virus infected maniacs out of 21.
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