Film Review: How Breck Eisner Crafted the World of The Crazies
At the beginning of The Crazies there’s a shot of the once idyllic small town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa in shambles — cars, homes, and businesses ablaze, no signs of life; instead, only signs there was once life in the form of corpses strewn about. It’s more reminiscent of a war zone than the picture-perfect slice of Middle America it once was, which is a great testament to the filmmakers for being able to fully realize their vision of a world gone mad. A vision that became quite apparent when the film’s director, Breck Eisner (director of 2005’s Matthew McConaughey action-adventure flick Sahara), was asked whether like the original 1973 version of The Crazies (conceived and brought to life by George Romero [Dawn of the Dead], master and legend of the horror/thriller genre), which received comparisons to Vietnam, did he feel like his remake of The Crazies warranted comparisons to the wars of today? Breck expressed his feeling that the social commentary of the original The Crazies really nailed what was going on during that post-Vietnam era, and that even though his version, like the original, is first and foremost entertainment, it still courts relevance by providing social commentary on post-9/11 America.
