THE CRAZIES : [7/10] : Breck Eisner : US 10 : 101m : {18/28}
It is a splendid time to live in! It is as if a whole new world were being created around one!
H.Ibsen, An Enemy of the People
The Crazies proves that there is clearly a simple recipe to be followed by those who seek to remake horror/sci-fi classics/minor-classics from the 1970s and 1980s. It goes something like this:
1. Take original.
2. Handle with at least a modicum of tact, intelligence and respect.
3. Add Timothy Olyphant.
4. Bring to boil.
Not complicated, by any measure. But where so many “re-dos” fail, either through a lack of respect or a lack of Timothy Olyphant, Breck Eisner’s slick re-imagining of George Romero’s 1973 The Crazies (a flawed but fondly-remembered example of “screwball horror.”)
Indeed, this pleasingly unpleasant tale of a small town ravaged by a homicidal-mania virus sees Olyphant – surely the most watchable, engaging and intelligent on-screen presence in mainstream American cinema right now – obtain a rare leading-man, first-name-in-the-credits role, his first since his career-reviving stint as the sheriff in TV’s revisionist western Deadwood (2004-06). Hitman (2007) doesn’t count, as the luxuriantly-follicled Olyphant was ill-advisedly shaved bald for the part, while his roles in Die Hard 4.0 and A Perfect Getaway were flashy and scene-stealing (in the latter case, spectacularly so), but technically supporting rather than lead.
In what’s perhaps a nod to Deadwood, Olyphant is again cast a sheriff – this time one who’s married to the town doctor (Radha Mitchell), the couple eagerly anticipating the birth of their first child. But then various types of biohazard nastiness hit the fan, the ensuing mayhem playing like a nightmare version of the Airborne Toxic Event chapters from Don DeLillo’s White Noise – though more recent cinematic forerunners such as Cloverfield were probably more prominent in the mind of scriptwriters Scott Kosar and Ray Wright, and director Eisner (impressively emerging from the wreckage of 2005’s notoriously-troubled but unfairly maligned Sahara).
Indeed, there’s nothing particularly surprising or fresh about The Crazies – but while it’s corny in some of its details (the “imperilled pregnancy” shtick is laid on particularly thick; women are too often squealing damsels-in-distress) and occasionally over-reliant on hackneyed, sudden-hand-on-shoulder “boo!” type scares, this is essentially a quite serious-minded, adult-oriented affair.
It’s shot in chilly, sombre, slightly bleached-out tones by cinematographer Maxime Alexandre – the Belgian working with a similar palette to the one he deployed on The Hills Have Eyes (2006), and benefitting from what is, given usual Hollywood practice, the surprising decision to shoot this Iowa-set film actually in Iowa (and Georgia) rather than, say, Saskatchewan. Eisner and Alexandre achieve some striking compositions from simple details of farmhouse, field, sky, road – it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn they had a reproduction of Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World (above) on hand during the shooting…
Not that The Crazies is really saying much about Small Town USA, other than that it’s essentially a Good Thing and should be defended against an out-of-control American government/military – there’s even a topical quasi-reference to Iraq/Afghanistan at one point, when a fresh-faced grunt complains that he didn’t “sign up to shoot unarmed civilians.”
Nevertheless, certain (paranoid) political and social subtexts are, a la Romero, present for viewers who want to delve a little deeper beneath the surface of a picture which also functions just fine as straight-ahead multiplex entertainment. As has been noted elsewhere, The Crazies owes a considerable debt to Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play An Enemy of the People – the great-great-grand-daddy of the whole “contaminated water supply” sub-genre.
Neil Young
3rd March, 2010
¦ Empire cinema, Newcastle, UK, 3.Mar.10 ( £5.95) ¦