If you’re going to make a horror movie called “The Crazies,” you’d better go big or go home. Unfortunately for director Breck Eisner, helming his first film since the abysmal “Sahara” way back in 2005, he seems to be blissfully unaware that anyone could come into this film with any sort of expectations.
And maybe he’s not wrong. After all, the film is a remake of a minor George Romero film from the ’70s and as far as the concept goes it’s all pretty standard fare nowadays. The plot, such as it is, is one of those mysterious-virus-turns-the-population-into-remorseless-killers vehicles that could now probably fill a whole shelf in a video store. But then again, it’s called “The Crazies,” and if that isn’t an opportunity to go balls out, over the top and have a lot of fun, then we don’t know what is.
The film opens with the idyllic scene of a baseball game, in sleepy, small town Ogden Marsh, Iowa, when a weirdo walks onto the field with a shotgun. Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) clears the field and tries to reason with the unresponsive man, before shooting him dead after the guy goes for his gun. David chalks it up to the man being drunk but when similarly blank faced people start showing up at the town doctor’s office (who just happens to conveniently be his wife Judy, played by Radha Mitchell) and being seen around town, David begins to sense something sinister is going on. Together with his deputy Russell (Joe Anderson), David begins to do some investigating and finds out (via some pretty big leaps of the imagination as the script doesn’t do much to offer an insight into his reasoning) that a mysterious military plane crash in a nearby swamp (which is somehow used for the town’s drinking water, yuck) must contain some kind of poison or virus that is making people sick.
No sooner than you can say “conspiracy” does the United States military show up, closing off all roads in and out of town and herding people like cattle into quarantined pens, separating the sick from the healthy. Of course, in a movie like this, the military are complete incompetents and their whole operation goes awry when a local smashes his pick up truck through a fence (seriously) and the unarmed townspeople inexplicably manage to frighten and overwhelm the heavily armed forces. Naturally, the government’s reaction is to eradicate the population entirely leaving David, Judy and Russell to take to the fields to fight for their survival against biohazard suited military men and wandering zombies.
Generally, in a film like this, the zombies are established early on by a set of rules that lays out their viciousness, speed etc. In this film however, the particulars of the zombies are constantly contradicted. At one point we’re told the incubation period is 48 hours, but some people turned right away, while others take a couple of days. Some seem smart, others dumb. Some are fast, some aren’t. Some have super strength, while others don’t. It seems that whatever the situation calls for, screenwriters Scott Kosar and Ray Wright tweak the rules to make sure the protagonists get out alive.
The end result is a film that is painfully dull. Too many times characters are saved by someone killing the zombie by shooting from off screen, or they gain the upper hand by some trivial element (or, in sudden cases of bad continuity, when a gun suddenly becomes in reach or a character happens to move a needed foot or two closer or further away). Worse, the set ups are unimaginative to begin with, and seem like they could’ve been pulled from any other third rate horror film made in the last decade.
But often, Eisner is his own worse enemy and we particularly feel for editor Billy Fox, who had to cobble this thing together. Eisner seems to have shot exactly everything on the script page much to his detriment, so things like coverage or transitions are strangely missing throughout portions of the film, leading to some very jarring edits. In one particularly bad example, David and Russell get into their pick up truck, and David starts the engine. The scene immediately cuts to them sitting in a boat, gliding over the swamp with a third character who barely gets an introduction. Eisner also ruins two potentially great sequences by not being able to have a shot last more than three seconds, and choosing to film fight scenes in indecipherable close-ups and fast cuts, rather than letting some set pieces just play out.
At 101 minutes, “The Crazies” is far too long, especially considering how predictable the material really is. This is the kind of stuff that needs to come in at a crisp 80-90 minutes, no more. Eisner clearly displays why no one has let him near a feature film in five years, however, he is savvy enough to leave a huge potential for sequel at the end, so in the off chance that the film becomes moderately profitable, he’ll at least have secured himself another paycheck.
Directed with no teeth, no sense of fun and no sense of humor, “The Crazies” is simply a drag. Kosar and Scott’s thin script is directed with all the skill of a director still learning his trade, which clearly, Eisner still is. The worst crime is that it’s boring. We can’t remember the last screening we attended where we saw the glow of cell phones popping up so periodically to see how much time was left (this reviewer included). Ultimately, the film is so colossally rote it should’ve been called “The Blands” instead. [C-]