'Crazies' respray an old-school screamer
Unlike Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller "Shutter Island" that only looks like a horror movie, "The Crazies" is the real deal, an old-fashioned fright fest of paranoid persecution with blood and pitchforks and screaming and knives and contagious viruses and flamethrowers and military cover-ups and people fleeing for their lives.
The story - a taut remake of 1973's "Crazies" directed by legendary zombie guru George Romero - takes place in the idyllic rural community of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, where the only really good-looking townspeople are local sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) and his hot doctor wife Judy (Radha Mitchell).
Coincidence?
Of course not. They are two of the survivors of a mysterious virus that sweeps through town, turning regular American citizens into yechy-looking crazies who bleed from their noses and want to kill everyone around them.
The Duttons are joined by Deputy Sheriff Russ Klank (Joe Anderson) and a cute local teenager named Becca (Danielle Panabaker) as they try to stay alive by dodging not only the crazies, but American troops would rather shoot everybody in town than take the time to sort the diseased from the uninfected.
"The Crazies" isn't a great movie by any stretch, but neither was Romero's original. We learn just enough about the characters to give them an identity, then it's on to the chase sequences and suspense setups.
Breck Eisner, whose 2005 adventure "Sahara" was so bad, it could have killed off all future adaptations of Clive Cussler novels, has apparently found his stride with this remake, an enjoyable blend of shocks, mayhem and humor.
"I'm all for a little civil disobedience," Russ tells the sheriff as he's about to defy the military, "but this just might cost you your job!"
Eisner delights in freaking us out with a runaway autopsy saw that threatens to neuter the sheriff. He also directs a blackly hilarious assault sequence that seeks to do for industrial car washes what "Psycho" did for shower stalls.
Eisner has no delusions of cinematic grandeur here. He simply wants to keep us off-balance with constant jack-in-the-box assaults and improbable action scenes that skirt the border of cheesy overkill.
Working from a screenplay updated by genre writers Scott Kosar and Ray Wright, Eisner lets his affection for Romero's original movie emanate from every frame.
Admittedly, "The Crazies" falls far short of Zack Snyder's superbly rendered remake of Romero's classic "Dawn of the Dead."
But, hey, don't cannibalistic zombies always trump virus-infected homicidal maniacs?
"The Crazies"Rating: #9733; #9733; #9733; Starring: Radha Mitchell, Timothy Olyphant, Joe Anderson, Danielle PanabakerDirected by: Breck EisnerOther: An Overture Entertainment release. Rated R for language and violence. 101 minutes