I never saw the Romero original. In fact, I’ve never even heard of it until the remake was announced. As such, I have no emotional ties to the original, so I’m not at all decrying this remake from Breck Eisner, who doesn’t exactly have a stellar resume, but when you’ve got Timothy Olyphant and genre fave Radha Mitchelle, how could you go wrong? Okay, plenty of ways to still go wrong, but I’m liking what I’m seeing from this first trailer for the movie. The movie doesn’t look or feel like a world beater, but as long as it’s tense and there’s plenty of thrills, I’m in like Flynn.
A husband and wife in a small Midwestern town find themselves battling for survival as their friends and family descend into madness in The Crazies. A mysterious toxin in the water supply turns everyone exposed to it into mindless killers and the authorities leave the uninfected to their certain doom in this terrifying reinvention of the George Romero horror classic. Directed by Breck Eisner (Sahara), The Crazies is written by Ray Wright (Pulse, Case 39) and Scott Kosar (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). The American Dream goes horribly wrong when the residents of this picture-perfect town begin to succumb to an uncontrollable urge for violence and the horrific bloodshed escalates into anarchy. In an attempt to contain the epidemic, the military uses deadly force to close off access into or out of town, abandoning the few healthy citizens to the growing mayhem as depraved killers lurk in the shadows. Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant); his pregnant wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell); Becca (Danielle Panabaker), an assistant at the medical center; and Russell (Joe Anderson), Dutton’s deputy and right-hand man, find themselves trapped in a once idyllic town they can no longer recognize. Unable to trust former neighbors and friends, deserted by the authorities and terrified of contracting the illness themselves, they are forced to band together in a nightmarish struggle for survival.
Starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Danielle Panabaker, Joe Anderson, and directed by Breck Eisner.
The crazies attack February 26, 2010.