‘The Crazies’: Spine-tingling, powerless, kill-crazy Iowans

One of the spine-tingling central conceits of zombie/ pandemic-themed horror movies is the powerlessness of their victims. Through no fault of their own, a character can contract a debilitating virus, either through a zombie bite or unwilling exchange of DNA with the infected, thereby becoming a threat to his or her loved ones. In the terrifying moments before disease overwhelms their bodies, afflicted characters face a grim conundrum: Do they suffer silently and endanger their companions, or commit suicide before they can contaminate the others? Almost every movie in this genre, from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to "28 Days Later," hinges on this primal fear of submission to pestilence, and it's one of the many reasons these films are so perennially resonant.

Most recently, Overture Studios' new horror remake "The Crazies" proved the enduring nightmare power of the grotesque disease sub-genre by scaring up $16.1 million in box office receipts on opening weekend. Drawing both its name and premise from the 1973 George Romero cult classic, both films closely mimic the tone and spookiness of the better entries in Romero's "...of the Dead" series, which began in 1968 with "Night of the Living Dead," only replacing zombies with the diseased.While the original "The Crazies" excels as a zeitgeist of ‘70s anxiety, wild overacting and lack of an interesting protagonist distances viewers from the emotional urgency of the story, and will likely only sustain the interest of Romero completists. The 2010 remix, happily, is engaging from its very first frame.

Breck Eisner, son of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, streamlines central elements from Romero's template and manages the rare remake that honors the promise of its source material. Timothy Olyphant and Rhada Mitchell anchor the story with their solid star performances as David and Judy Dutton, a young couple who reside in Ogden Marsh, Iowa, an idyllic setting for the craziness about to ensue. David, the local sheriff, discovers a crashed military cargo plane downriver from the town's drinking supply. Townspeople seem like they're losing their minds and erupt into senseless violence against their neighbors, uncomfortably mirroring the recent explosion of fatal domestic conflicts across the country. Something leaking from that plane into the water is making everyone, well, crazy. Then, in moves the military.

Eisner, whose only major prior release was the 2005 bomb "Sahara," proves quite capable here. Many sequences in "The Crazies" are masterfully staged, wringing white-knuckled suspense out of creative set pieces. The scene where our heroes get trapped in a car wash with kill-crazy infected Iowans is a fine example. Eisner also coaxes believability, which is an essential and overlooked component of successful horror movies, out of the performances from the movie's fine cast. The closer a fright flick hews to universal fears and social ills, the scarier it will seem.

"The Crazies" is well worth your movie-going dollar. Despite an over-reliance on gimmicky "gotcha" scares, the film is an immersive and disturbing experience. Though "The Crazies" is unmistakably a Hollywood cash-in, it's conducted skillfully enough to engross even the most jaded horror fan. 

Rated ‘R'

101 minutes

Horror/ Sci-fi

Starring

Timothy Olyphant

and Radha Mitchell