There’s a solid chance this month’s edition of “Revenge of the Remakes” ends up as one of my favorite column entries. George A. Romero’s The Crazies and Breck Eisner’s The Crazies inspire an exceptional case study about the peaceful coexistence between remakes and originals. Both filmmakers choose unique perspectives when dooming small-town America, even though the early 1970s and dawning 2010s validate eerily similar conspiracy paranoias. Stacking these Trixie-toxin thrillers back-to-back validates why remakes aren’t here to piss all over your safe, swaddling nostalgia blankets. Remakes aren’t the enemy — they’re a golden opportunity.
Romero’s The Crazies could only accomplish so much as a commentary against bureaucratic incompetence given the $270K budget. It benefits from a facelift, much like how Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes reaches its full potential as a bloodthirsty 2000s revamp. That’s not a shot at legends who’ve immortalized their contributions to horror cinema — Craven and Romero are responsible for entire volumes in the unwritten horror bible. Instead, it’s an argument starter that begs to evaluate contemporary remakes on their merits against source titles that might be rougher around the edges than legacy blinders allow us to admit.
The Approach
‘The Crazies’ (1973)
The tonal separation between Romero’s and Eisner’s visions speaks to each era’s political and militaristic anxieties (Vietnam War vs. Iraq and Afghanistan deployments). They’re both disgusted by America’s valuation of middle to lower-class citizens, but drastically varied in their execution. Much like The Stuff, The Blob, or The Return of the Living Dead, Romero fixates on American military officials and Washington hotshots as a focal satire. Eisner unleashes a rage virus a la 28 Days Later or The Sadness that consumes innocent townsfolk as the camera captures their struggles, less interested in the dumbfuckery colonels and biochemical engineers get themselves into. There’s a knife-to-throat bleakness about the remake that doesn’t exist in Romero’s exploitation portrayal of what could be going on behind closed doors — Eisner channels the irrationality of nearly four additional decades worth of documented corruption and bypasses what we already assume.
Iowa’s Ogden Marsh plays backdrop in 2010’s The Crazies (penned by Scott Kosar and Ray Wright). Timothy Olyphant stars as a respectable sheriff in David Dutton, one of the first to witness a troubling outbreak that turns townsfolk into violent berzerkers. David, his doctor-wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), his deputy Russell (Joe Anderson), and Judy’s assistant Becca (Danielle Panabaker) band together when enforced quarantines go awry. It’s clear that something has infected Ogden Marsh, and American officials can’t risk its spread, lest the entire world turns into bloodthirsty killing machines like the Marshian mutants.
Beck doesn’t mess with ferocious tonal shifts made famous by 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or 2004’s Dawn of the Dead. Major horror releases of the 2000s and earlier 2010s all followed a template where moods sank, colors dulled, and grittiness cast a dark shadow. Call it “The Platinum Dunes” effect, blame post-9/11 rewiring, and point at the rise in popularity of Zack Snyder’s muted style — these all shaped the greater horror landscape. Movies had to compete with a world that wasn’t hiding its terrible and terrifying realities, leading movies like The Crazies to hold nothing back. Not to say Romero pulls punches, but the flip in perspective from inside the government to outside as bystanders says everything about how society was feeling during the era of each film’s release.
Does It Work?
‘The Crazies’ (2010)
Eisner nails the ruthless aesthetic of making a socio-political survival thriller in 2000s horror terms. There’s an unctuous malaise to 2010’s The Crazies that submerges audiences in a rural American nightmare. From start to finish, a sense of hopelessness keeps us on edge as David’s group marches towards their inevitable fates. Romero does well to represent the government as manipulative, incompetent fools who poison the country they’re meant to protect, which Eisner doesn’t need to do as heavily this time. Plenty happens between 1973 and 2010 that makes Romero’s assertions less and less fantastical, which lets Eisner lean into the utter inhumanity Ogen Marsh’s population endures as tax-paying collateral damage.
Intensity jumps a few notches by treating The Crazies like 28 Days Later or other “Rage Virus” films. Eisner produces an infinitely scarier version of The Crazies on a purely visual level. Ogden Marsh’s “crazy” residents almost look zombified as they skewer, roast, and commit heinous acts of violence against their neighbors, fitting the 2000s need one-up what’s shown during weekday news segments. Eisner is going for the full-on horror experience, from righteous jump scares in sudsy car washes to gnarly killing blows in mechanic bays, if only to emphasize what Romero established years prior. He’s able to retain the anger in Romero’s themes while adding post-millennium angst and pulse-pounding tension, staying true to the original’s conspiratorial themes with a deeper bite.
The entire cast of 2010’s The Crazies does a tremendous job selling the transformation of Ogden Marsh into a dystopian outbreak site. We’re talking beyond Olyphant as the gun-slinging hero or Anderson as the slow to show infection replacement for Harold Wayne Jones’ Vietnam War veteran Clank. Actors like Brett Rickaby as arsonist Bill Franum or Larry Cedar as the wielder of the infamous pitchfork on the remake’s poster do a tremendous job displaying the virus’ stranglehold. Romero shows his infected losing their moral blockers as fathers become incest-hungry monsters or ex-military men become trigger-happy soldiers off the battlefield, whereas Eisner goes the murderous mayhem route almost instantaneously. It’s a straightforward and scarier breed of sicko foe.
The Result
‘The Crazies’ (2010)
Eisner and his writers pay immense respect to Romero’s original but aren’t afraid to deviate from existing blueprints. Significant events are still relevant, from Russell’s slow realization that he’s becoming the enemy to a hanging that’s ten times more harrowing this time around. The Crazies (1973) is built around what happens when the early stages of pandemic containment spiral out of control, with heavy doses of authoritative cynicism that Eisner doesn’t strive to copycat. The redo’s script cracks a haunting new way to interpret those fears after a few more decades of recorded and reported government misdeeds without muffling less than subtle people-versus-state messages.
The most notable creative difference sees no character in the ballpark of Richard France’s scientist, Dr. Watts, who spends the majority of Romero’s film testing an antidote that could save humanity. Eisner doesn’t care about what’s happening in laboratories or makeshift command centers because what’s truly horrific isn’t found in beakers or under microscope magnification. Where Romero’s film is more about commanding bodies failing on a spectacular scale, Eisner emphasizes the avoidable consequences we the people endure. Romero wants you to see the parties responsible, whereas Eisner wants your skin to crawl when watching innocents morph into bloodthirsty lunatics. If anything, Romero gets lost in Dr. Watts’ mission and cleanup objectives while Eisner successfully hinges his film on rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth aspects the original glosses over.
The Crazies matches Romero’s blunt social awareness by refusing to tiptoe around intentions but does elevate action and violence on gorier terms. It becomes a more standardized horror experience, easily accessible to masses who want to squirm in their theater seats on a Friday night. Eisner orchestrates senseless bloodshed that sticks with you long after the evidence has been nuked into dust, taking the Horror 101 route to assert points versus something like the asinine red tape that inevitably prevents Dr. Watts from saving the day. The remake is no dumber or a less thoughtful commentary on classified weapons experiments and the global threat they pose — Eisner plays in a different sandbox with new toys. His The Crazies makes the most of 2000s du jor horror trends, never feeling like a fad film that’s preying upon nostalgia or mimicry to strike relevance.
The Lesson
It’s a shame that governmental satires remain relevant with cyclical predictability. The Crazies as a concept is as relatable today as it was in 2010 or 1973. Eisner understands that Romero’s foundation doesn’t have to be altered, only the presentation. Proper remakes reinvent; they don’t rehash. Watching Romero’s and Eisner’s versions of The Crazies paints a complete red, white, and bruised picture of how the government works for itself, not the American people. That’s because they’re two halves of a conversation about broken systems, neither movie stepping on the other’s lines when telling their stories.
So what did we learn?
● If George A. Romero is alright with signing off on remakes of his films, then we should be too.
● Timothy Olyphant is due for a return to the horror genre.
● Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but reinterpretation is more fulfilling.
● If I hear another person try to tell me 2000s horror remakes were worthless, so help me Paimon…
Confession time! I saw The Crazies (2010) way before I ever saw Romero’s The Crazies (1973). I was a Hofstra University junior still fresher into my horror journey, checking out the latest scary fare in theaters that weekend. Did that sour my appreciation of Romero’s original when I finally started exploring horror’s bottomless vault of past releases? Not a lick.
Remakes aren’t an assault on existing culture — they’re a contemporary gateway into horror’s rich history. The best remakes will spark curiosity in younger audiences to seek out those movies that came first, not instigate a nostalgia flame war that wants to erase titles from relevance. If you want proof, here I am.