The basic story is the same: due to a chemical released in the town water supply, the residents in a rural Iowa farming community begin to turn into zombie-like crazies, turning on friends and family with blank stares and violent intentions. The government intervenes by closing off the community to the outside world, moving residents into concentration camps, and executing the sick with the healthy. The theme of United States military action being crazier than the crazies is treated with less vitriol than in the original, but remains present just the same.

The script follows a group of uninfected residents as they attempt to escape first from the crazies, and then from the military. The film is more effective before the military arrive, as the soldiers have less personality than the mindless crazies, but holds interest throughout with many inventive killing sequences.

Timothy Olyphant plays the town sheriff who must escape with his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell), her assistant (Danielle Panabaker), and his deputy (Joe Anderson). Between HBO’s Deadwood, The Crazies, and the upcoming series Justified, Olyphant seems destined to continue playing hardy sheriff characters; luckily, it’s a part he plays well. Panabaker’s pregnant Judy suffers from several moments of unearned sentimentality, but Joe Anderson does a convincing job of someone on the verge of madness, viral or otherwise.

With a budget forty times that of the original, one of the elements most improved upon are the visuals. A sterile blue cast is given to the cinematography, mirrored in the open skies, wardrobes, broken glass, and set decorations. The frequent fires of the film contrast nicely against the blue, until by the end of the film, the landscape and colo r palette changes to a fiery orange. (Compare Images 5 through 8)

The film also makes good use of its Iowa setting, opening with expansive shots of corn fields and residents driving tractors in curlers. We feel the apocalyptic breadth of the horror through these wide, empty outdoor settings as characters walk down deserted roads past abandoned fields that stretch past the horizon. Romero is typically known for creating anxiety through claustrophobia, but here we get a matching sense of isolation through director Breck Eisner’s use of agoraphobia.

Breck Eisner uses “We’ll Meet Again” within the opening credits, a song heavy with ironic apocalyptic associations since its use in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, but unfortunately The Crazies doesn’t match the effect of this so-eerie-you-have-to-laugh juxtaposition during the rest of the film. A few characters hum or sing to themselves as crazies, but it feels like too much of a cliché and not enough of an anachronism to be truly creepy.

The special effects of The Crazies, while not revolutionary, are quite a step up from the original. We’re treated to realistic explosions, detailed skin discolorations, and many creative death sequences. An attack in a car wash has some novelty to it, even if all the scares of The Crazies are the cheap, jump-out-at-you kind. Still, for those who like their horror films violent, there should be plenty of effects that will please, including attacks by mortician handsaws, pick axes, and even a scene where a character stabs a crazy in the neck with a knife that’s currently lodged through his own hand.