DVD of the Week: The Crazies (2010)

Thanks to Michael Bay, most horror film remakes are regarded with scorn and skepticism. His production company has managed to crank out a string of unimaginative, slick rehashes often made by music video directors and starring young, unremarkable actors from television. So, there weren’t many expectations when it was announced that a remake of George A. Romero’s The Crazies (1973) was announced. It was a low-budget cautionary tale about the inhabitants of a town that go insane after being exposed to a top secret government toxin code named Trixie. Fortunately, this new version doesn’t have Bay’s stink anywhere near it and is directed by Breck Eisner, freed from director’s jail where he had been imprisoned for Sahara (2005). This new version of The Crazies (2010) would succeed or fail on the decisions he made regarded the tone of the film, how closely he would stick to the original and how he would contemporize it to reflect our times.


Eisner grabs our attention right from the get-go and lets us know that something isn’t right in the small town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa. During a Little League baseball game, a disheveled-looking man walks out onto the field with a loaded shotgun. Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) is in attendance and confronts the man. Dutton is forced to shoot and kill the man. Something doesn’t seem right about the situation. Sure, the man was the town drunk but the tests come back and reveal that he had no alcohol in his system. Pretty soon, other townsfolk start acting strangely. The sheriff’s wife, Dr. Judy Dutton (Radha Mitchell) sees a man who appears listless and tired, repeating himself. Later that night, he burns down his house with his family in it. It doesn’t take long for the military to step in and round up and quarantine the townsfolk including the Duttons. Naturally, the military are unable to contain the threat and all hell breaks loose.

Breck Eisner does a nice job of gradually building up the threat and taking enough time to let us get to know the main characters so that we care about what happens to them later on. Early on, he creates a sense of place with several atmospheric establishing shots of the town. There are also several tension-filled moments, like when Judy is strapped to a gurney in government quarantine with a room full of others and an infected person enters the room and begins stabbing those still alive with a pitchfork. There is a real, palpable sense that she’s in danger. Another frighteningly effective scene takes place in a car wash as our heroes are besieged by the infected. There’s also an eerily beautiful shot of the town at night, ravaged by fire and destruction brought on by its infected inhabitants.

The Crazies is anchored by strong performances by Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell. Playing the sheriff in this film seems like a warm-up, of sorts, for his current role as a U.S. Marshal in the T.V. show Justified. He brings just the right amount of affability and gravitas to the role while also having good chemistry with genre veteran Mitchell. She has a real knack for conveying the right mix of resilience and vulnerability while also imparting an intelligence to convincingly play a doctor. Plus, she’s got a great pair of lungs and can deliver an absolutely chilling scream when her character is being terrorized. Also worth mentioning is Joe Anderson who is quite good as the ever dependable deputy. He brings an exciting intensity to his role and does an excellent job realizing his character’s entire arc over the course of the film.

With 9/11, and with it the threats of Anthrax and SARS, as well as the success of chemical threat horror films like 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007), it’s amazing that it took so long for a remake of The Crazies to be made. It’s really a testimony to how prescient Romero’s original film is that it’s just as relevant today as it was back in the 1970s. Thanks to the Patriot Act, if a town were infected by chemical warfare the government could do what happens in this film which makes it that much more terrifying. What makes this film a successful remake is the choices Eisner makes, like how he depicts the infected, shown in three distinct phases which is a nice variation on what Romero did in the original. One gets the impression watching The Crazies that the filmmakers put a lot of thought into this film. This isn’t just a carbon copy of the original. Unlike so many lazy remakes, this one examines some weighty themes and wraps them up in a very entertaining package.

Special Features:

There is an audio commentary by director Breck Eisner who, rather appropriately, starts off talking about how he got involved in the project. He wanted the film’s focus to be on the townsfolk, specifically David and Judy Dutton. He admits that initially he did not want to remake a Romero film but after watching the original again felt that he could increase the scale of it and update the premise to reflect contemporary issues. Eisner touches upon various aspects, including casting and locations, while also eloquently analyzing the film’s themes.

“Behind the Scenes with Breck Eisner” is a pretty standard if not well-made making of featurette that mixes interview soundbites with clips from the film. Eisner points out that an early version of the script he read had more of a balance between depicting the townsfolk and the military but he wanted to focus more on the town with an emphasis on horror rather than action.

“Paranormal Pandemics” takes a look at how the filmmaker designed the infected. The original design looked too much like zombies and so they went for a more vein-y look. We see actors getting fantastic-looking makeup applied. Eisner explains the three stages of infection and expanded on Romero’s original concept. They based the makeup on actual infections to give an added realism to the film.

“The George A. Romero Template” features filmmakers like Phantasm auteur Don Coscarelli and pundits from various horror film websites singing the praises of Romero’s films and how influential they are. Naturally, they talk about the original Crazies film and its relevance now.

“Make-Up Mastermind: Rob Hall in Action” goes into more detail about how they created the infected makeup. It’s pretty cool to see how they do it and how realistic it looks.

“The Crazies Motion Comic Episodes 1 & 2” features simplistic animated comic book art providing the backstory to the events depicted in the film.

“Visual Effects in Motion” takes a look at a few sequences before CGI was added and how, by stages, they achieved the end result. It is interesting to see how much a given sequence is enhanced by CGI.

Also included are a teaser and two theatrical trailers.

Finally, there is a “Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery” featuring shots of the cast and crew at work.

DVD of the Week: Silent Hill

NOTE: To celebrate Halloween I will be posting articles related to horror films all month.

Since Christophe Gans’ surprise international success with Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), there has been a certain amount of anticipation for what he would do next after showing such promise with a film that effortlessly juggled several genres. For awhile, he was attached to The Adventurer, an Indiana Jones-style adventure film and a remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, neither of which made it past the pre-production phase. Fortunately, he finally made another movie called Silent Hill (2006). Unfortunately, it’s an adaptation of the video game of the same name. The track record for these kinds of movies isn’t that good (Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark anyone?).

After her daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) almost sleepwalks her way off a cliff while yelling out the words, “Silent Hill,” Rose (Radha Mitchell) decides to find and take her daughter to the place of the same name as a form of therapy. Rose and her husband Chris (Sean Bean) differ on how to treat their adopted daughter – he thinks she should be medicated and see a doctor, while Rose chooses Silent Hill, West Virginia because that’s where Sharon supposedly came from. Unfortunately, after they leave, Chris does some research and finds out that where they are going is a notorious ghost town that was devastated by a horrendous fire 30 years ago.

While foolishly trying to outrun a police officer (Laurie Holden) on a motorcycle on a dangerous stretch of road, Rose crashes her SUV trying to avoid a mysterious figure. When she regains consciousness, her daughter has disappeared and ash falls from the sky like snow. Rose continues on foot with the cop and they soon find themselves in Silent Hill, a deserted town not on any maps. Unfortunately, they soon encounter the town’s creepy denizens while searching for Sharon.

Radha Mitchell, who established solid genre credentials with Pitch Black (2000), plays a strong woman who undergoes an emotionally harrowing journey during the course of the film. She is credibly scared out of her mind when it is warranted but is also very proactive, driven to find her daughter. Mitchell has the ability to act tough while also conveying a vulnerability that makes her very appealing. It is also nice to see Sean Bean cast against type, playing a sympathetic character instead of the bad guys he traditionally plays.

As he demonstrated with Brotherhood of the Wolf, Gans is an excellent visual storyteller and within the first five minutes not only the central dilemma but also a richly atmospheric world with a David Lynchian soundscape is established. He also demonstrates a knack for vivid, unsettling imagery: an army of horribly charred toddlers still burning as they swarm all over Rose, crying out in pain. With its nightmarish, otherworldly look, Silent Hill clearly exists in another time and place and Gans conveys this through production and set design rich in detail and a soundtrack that uses music sparingly but when he does it is unusual and very effective. He downplays a musical score that is trip-hop in nature (a funky juxtaposition) in favor of elaborate sound design including an eerie air raid siren that goes off repeatedly when something bad is going to happen.

I have never played the video game so I have no idea how faithful this film is to its source material but it is strong enough to stand on its own merits and is very much its own entity. They say every town has its own story and Silent Hill’s is as troubled as they come. Over the course of the film, its past and the source of the apocalyptic fire that brought about its demise is gradually revealed. Silent Hill is one of those rare horror films that is truly horrific, right down to its impressively staged grand guginol finale where the tormentors become the tormented as Rose serves up some well deserved revenge but not in a stereotypical way, like at the end of a gun. Like most good horror movies, Rose’s journey is a waking nightmare with one frightening encounter after another with all sorts of grotesque creatures tormenting her along the way.

Silent Hill is a refreshing horror film in that it not only features two female protagonists who are more than capable of taking care of themselves and uncover the mysteries of the town but also a formidable female antagonist and the man as the passive character who waits by the phone for our heroine to call. Roger Avary’s screenplay isn’t anything special but it doesn’t need to be in Gans’ capable hands. Together, they have crafted a clever horror film that depicts a zealous, puritanical society punished for unjustly persecuting witches. The film illustrates the destructive power of hatred – pretty heavy topics for a video game adaptation.

Special Features:

“Paths of Darkness: Making Silent Hill” is comprised of six featurettes that can be viewed separately or altogether. Gans was a big fan of the video game and found it very scary with lots of cinematic possibilities. For the director, the film is about fear and emotion and that is what attracted him to it. He also purposely cast actors who work predominantly in independent cinema because they aren’t instantly recognizable and in one featurette he touches upon why he cast the actors that he did while they talk about their characters. Most of the town of Silent Hill was created from scratch with four different phases of its incarnation that resulted in an impressive 106 sets! However, they did film some exteriors in the Canadian town of Brantford, Ontario. A terrific amount of work went into these sets as these extras illustrate. They also explore the stunt work and how, in particular, Radha Mitchell and Laurie Holden did a lot of their own stunts and had a blast doing them. We also see how the various creatures were created – Gans’ mandate was that they should be disturbing rather than disgusting, although, they are that as well.

DVD of the Week: Rogue

After the surprise success of his debut film, Wolf Creek (2005), horror fans eagerly anticipated Greg McLean’s next film about a killer crocodile entitled, Rogue (2007). However, a rival croc film, Primeval (2007), stole its thunder, tanked at the box office, and Dimension Films delayed Rogue’s release as a result. After several delays, the studio gave the film a way-too brief theatrical release in North America (in only 10 theaters) and unceremoniously released it on DVD which just goes to show that timing is everything.

Pete McKell (Michael Vartan) is a travel writer for a magazine who takes a wildlife river cruise with a group of tourists in the Northern Territory of Australia. On the way back, Kate (Radha Mitchell), the boat’s tour guide and skipper, spots a distress flare. She makes the decision to check it out, which you just know is a really bad idea. To make matter worse, Kate takes the boat through forbidden sacred territory. The once beautiful-looking scenery now becomes increasingly foreboding. Predictably, the boatload of tourists gets stranded out in the middle of nowhere with a monster crocodile methodically stalking them. It doesn’t take long for our group to start bickering amongst themselves while Kate tries to maintain order and keep everyone calm.

McLean puts us immediately at ease with stunning cinematography that captures the gorgeous countryside while we get to know the characters in the boat. If he ever decides to give up feature films, he could make a lucrative career making nature documentaries. McLean dwells on the wild life and their environment which does a good job of drawing us into this world. You really get the sense that he loves this country and cares about these characters. It is a clever tactic that establishes a false sense of security, lulling us into complacency so that when the first scare comes, it really has an impact. McLean also pays close attention to the film’s soundscape with all kinds of eerie noises that evokes another atmospheric Australian film, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), as he gradually lets the darkness seep in.

Rogue is a very well-written film – unusual for the horror genre – as some of the characters impart fascinating croc lore about their territoriality. The dynamic between the characters is also very believable and they react exactly as you would expect in an extreme situation such as this one. It’s great to see a genre veteran like Radha Mitchell, who has done science fiction (Pitch Black) and horror (Silent Hill), revisit the latter with Rogue. She brings an authenticity that grounds the film in reality. She also has a kind of charisma that is very appealing and the camera picks up on it.

The croc effects – a mix of CGI and animatronics – are quite realistic looking and much more believable than the ones used in both Lake Placid (1999) and Primeval. It’s an impressive beast in size and ferocity to say the least. McLean knows how to wring every bit of tension from a scene, most notably, a harrowing sequence where several tourists attempt to cross a river via a suspended rope. After the graphic violence of Wolf Creek, McLean shows surprising restraint with the gore and makes up for it with the intensity of the croc attacks. Rogue is one of those rare horror films with heart and that gets you emotionally invested in the characters while still trying to scare the pants off you. It also reminds us of the harsh reality of Mother Nature and just how much we are at her mercy.

Special Features:

There is an audio commentary by writer/producer/director Greg McLean. He mentions that he wrote the screenplay 11-12 years ago and has always been fascinated by the Northern Territory of Australia. McLean says that his goal on this one was to make an old fashioned monster movie with a killer croc. He points out bits of footage that was reinstated for the DVD. The director also points out the various locations they shot in and the challenges of shooting in extremely hot weather with all kinds of insects, snakes, and, of course, crocs around them. McLean speaks with an obvious passion for this film and does an excellent job taking us through his experience of making Rogue.

“The Making of Rogue” covers various aspects of the film in excellent detail: casting, principal photography, special effects, editing, and the score. McLean was inspired by a news story from the 1970s about a large, territorial crocodile that attacked several fishing boats over the course of a year. The filmmakers wanted the film to look like an epic journey and really capture the untouched beauty of the Australian countryside. This documentary shows the massive undertaking of making Rogue out in the middle of nowhere and under extreme conditions. This is more in-depth than your usual promotional featurette and fascinating as hell.

“Welcome to the Territory” consists of three mini-documentaries that basically takes segments from the Making Of doc and expands on them. The first one is on the special effects for the film’s most spectacular death scene. Next, is a look at the music for the film. We see McLean working with the film’s composer and how they approached complementing the visuals. Lastly, there is one about the Northern Territory where they shot most of the film. It’s a beautiful yet quite dangerous place. The filmmaker shot in a very remote area. Also included is more vintage newsreel footage of an actual rogue crocodile in the ‘70s.

“The Real Rogue” takes a look at how the visual effects team shot footage of actual crocs in order to create a realistic looking and moving animal. We excerpts of handlers dangling food a few inches away from a hungry croc.

Finally, there is a theatrical trailer.