Reviews of The Crazies (1973) and related work
- Remake: The Crazies (2010)
The Crazies (1973
)
Seen in 2015.
A natural follow-up from Romero’s work on Night of the Living Dead (1968), exploring a similar way people might have a change of temperament. The agent in this scenario, a bioweapon, is more gradual and ambiguous than the cosmic phenomenon of the Dead series, but the effects are no more existential or interesting. It’s quite charming how the military simply assumes that any egghead and some boots on the ground can solve the problem by entering the community, whereas any real biowarfare division would evacuate nearby towns, airdrop medication, shoot obvious victims from the air, and keep the infantry at a distance, quarantining individual refugees etc.
References here: The Falls (1980), Super 8 (2011).
‣ The Crazies (2010)
Seen in 2015.
Influenced by the troofer position that government is cartoonishly malevolent and powerful, yet weirdly incompetent, while any sheriff from a small town is bound to be a hero at the peak of human ability.