(Is this hell? No. It's IOWA, dipshit.)
CAST: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, Danielle Panabaker, Christie Lynn Smith,
Brett Rickaby, Preston Bailey.
DIRECTOR: Breck Eisner.
WARNING: SPOILERS and crazed Iowans up ahead....
Ever since FIELD OF DREAMS came out and portrayed Iowa as if it were just one neighborhood away from Paradise, the world of cinema has been crying out for the “ANTI-FIELD OF DREAMS.” You know, something without benevolent ghosts playing baseball, or farmers healing rifts with their long-dead dads, or wives inexplicably supporting their wacky husbands’ hare-brained schemes to plow down valuable corn plants to build Yankee Stadium lite. Something…. Crazy.
Admittedly, a guy plowing down a sizable chunk of his crop to build a baseball field after a voice tells him “If you build it, he will come” is pretty insane. But it’s still benevolent and benign compared to everything in the 2010 remake of the George Romero cult classic, THE CRAZIES. I remember seeing the original film when I was kid and thinking it was pretty fucking funny (the first clue that I was special). Something about a bunch of military guys trying to contain a viral epidemic in a small Pennsylvania town while wearing what looks like a bunch of sheep costumes just had me rolling on the floor. The whole thing looked like a lost Looney Tunes cartoon. I kept waiting for the Sheepdog and the Wolf to show up and go nine rounds in the background.
Fortunately, the remake goes for a grittier and more modern vibe. No lamb costumes. No bellbottoms big enough to hide a Volkswagen Beetle in. No jacket collars wide enough to serve Sunday roast on. And most fortunately, they change the setting from Pennsylvania to - wait for it - IOWA. If you’re wondering what that sound is, it’s the Iowa Tourism Board screaming in the night. Or maybe the Crazies just finally got them, too.
The movie gets down to business really fast. We are introduced to various inhabitants of sleepy Ogden Marsh, Iowa. I use the word “introduced” very loosely. We barely get to register anyone’s personality before things start to go wrong. We know Sheriff Dave Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) is well….a Sheriff. We know that his wife, Dr. Judy Dutton (Radha Mitchell), is, um… a doctor. We know that Dave’s deputy Russell Clank (yes, that’s his name) is weird. We know that Becca Darling (Danielle Panabaker) is Dr. Judy’s nurse aide and cuts out of work early regularly to meet her boyfriend, and that Dr. Judy affectionately tolerates this. Probably because Dr. Judy was once a slutty teenager, too.
Anyhow, almost immediately shit goes south. A farmer stomps onto a busy baseball field (obviously an homage to FIELD OF DREAMS) and gets blown in half by Dave when he starts waving a shotgun (obviously an homage to LOONEY TUNES). Stunned by the incident, the sleepy little town tries to pick up the pieces. But it’s hard to pick up the pieces when other things are crashing into more pieces around you: in short order, another farmer (besides the doc and the Sheriff and the Deputy and Becca, it seems that everyone else is a farmer or fucking one) burns his house down - with his family in it. That’s one way to solve a domestic problem. Unfortunately, Sheriff Dave doesn’t thinks so and launches an investigation. Fucking square…
Eventually, he and Deputy Clank (If I had that name, I would drown myself) discover a downed military plane in a nearby lake. Actually, it looks more like a swamp, but the characters seem to refer to it as a lake. Whatever. You guys carry guns, so I’ll buy in to your delusion. Anyway, no sooner have Dave and Clank returned to the station, when the bottom falls out from under them. Not literally, otherwise they’d be in hell. Which would probably still be in Iowa, if this movie is to be believed. Things take a turn for the nasty when the townspeople start doing weird things like sewing people’s eyes shut and chasing the Sheriff with bonesaws. Things get even worse when the military swoops in to contain the situation. In case you’re wondering, I’ve already said that they left the white bunny suits at home and have opted for more cutting edge camouflage chem-warfare gear. Thank. God. I don’t think I could get take another minute of sheep chasing nutjobs.
With most of the townspeople quarantined, Dave rounds up Judy, Becca, and Clank, and the foursome try to make a run for the border. Not for some Taco Bell, but for some safety - which rapidly dwindles with each passing scene. Becca gets herself killed in some inexplicable way in a carwash that has to be seen to believed. I had no idea rubber hoses could be so deadly, but whatever. Clank contracts the sickness and sacrifices himself to the military units guarding the city limits, while Dave and Judy race off into the darkness. Eventually, the reach what they think is the safety of the diner/gas station and the military quarantine. Except that everyone at the quarantine center has been shot-dead by the military. Oh, except for a crazy old infected biddy who goes around asking the corpses, “Did Phil Call?” No, you old bat. Now let me bleed to death in piece.
After a fairly tense cat and mouse chase scene inside the diner/gas station with some Redneck Crazies (a redundant term, if I ever heard one), Dave and Judy manage to steal a semi and hightail it out of town. Just as the military nukes Odgen Marsh behind them. As is often the case in this type of flick, the leads survive a massive explosion that would have incinerated supporting characters. Billing order has its privileges, I guess. No worries, though… Just when you think you might be in store for a happy ending as Dave and Judy amble through corn fields towards the city of Cedar Rapids and safety, THE CRAZIES pinches your nipple by showing that the military has been tracking our happy couple this whole time and are about to give Cedar Rapids the Ogden Marsh-treatment. In other words, forget building a baseball field. Try a bunker, instead.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: THE CRAZIES was a serviceable, but thoroughly predictable, remake. It’s more kinetic than the original, but it also lacks the depth of characterization that the earlier film had. We barely get to know anyone before the mayhem starts. Makes it hard to care about their fates, or mourn their deaths. Still, it’s a tightly-paced film with one very suspenseful sequence (the diner stalking scene at the end), and decent performances from Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell. If they’d been given more to work with, character-wise, THE CRAZIES 2010 would have been one of the better remakes out there. As it is, it’s merely a notch above average.
