Directed by Breck Eisner (The Expanse), The Crazies (2010) is a remake of George A. Romero’s (Night of the Living Dead) 1973 sci-fi horror film of the same name. Tense and well-crafted, the 2010 remake is an under-the-radar flick that’s worth watching, both for fans of Romero’s original film and for viewers who’ve finished HBO’s The Last of Us and need something to fill the Pedro Pascal-shaped hole in their binge-watching queue.
Set in a fictional small town in Iowa, The Crazies stars Timothy Olyphant (The Mandalorian) and Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill), and chronicles what happens to the residents of Ogden Marsh after a biological agent turns those infected into violent killers. Produced by Romero, The Crazies remake is incredibly underrated — and a perfect companion to parts of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) story in The Last of Us.
What Is “The Crazies” About?
As mentioned, The Crazies is a small town-set sci-fi horror film that takes its cues from zombie fare, but infuses it with shades of Resident Evil-esque bioweapon intrigue. When the film opens, Sheriff David Dutton (Olyphant) is watching a baseball game. A new meaning is given to the phrase “timeout” when Rory, a resident wielding a shotgun, appears in the outfield. Although he tries to talk Rory down from harming others, David ends up killing the suddenly-violent resident.
Meanwhile, Judy (Mitchell), the town’s doctor and David’s wife, notices her patient Bill exhibiting strange behavior, ranging from lifelessness to repetitive speech. There’s clearly something sinister afoot in Ogden Marsh, Iowa, and that’s made all the more clear when Bill locks his family inside their farmhouse and sets it on fire. After another body turns up in a swamp, David and his deputy, Russell (Joe Anderson), discover a crashed military aircraft in the river. Is there a link between this now-contaminated water and the townspeople's behavior? David sure thinks so, and suggests the mayor shut off the town’s drinking water supply.
Shortly after the town loses all communication services, soldiers arrive to set up a quarantine zone, forcing all of Ogden Marsh’s residents into the high school. The soldiers screen everyone for symptoms of an infection; Judy fails the exam — her body temperature is elevated because she’s pregnant, but clearly the soldiers aren’t fussed enough to consider that possibility.
David escapes the quarantine zone, returns to his office, and finds Russell, who agrees to help Olyphant's David rescue Judy. But when the duo arrive at the high school, they find that the infected townspeople have breached the quarantine zone’s perimeter, encouraging the soldiers to abandon their efforts.
How Is “The Crazies” Like “The Last Of Us”?
In the following scene, Judy is strapped to a gurney — in true Ellie fashion — along with several other potentially infected townspeople. The former school director shows up and takes it upon himself to kill anyone he believes to be a threat. David and Russell show up just in time to save both Judy and her assistant, Becca.
Escaping the overrun quarantine zone on foot, the group head to Becca’s boyfriend’s farm. There, soldiers who fled the high school raid the farm, shoot those who live there, and burn the bodies. After subduing a soldier, David learns that the military forces have been explicitly instructed to shoot and kill all the town’s civilians. Even those who were evacuated were executed on the way out of Ogden Marsh.
During their efforts to escape, David, Judy, and the others are able to get some more information out of a government employee, who explains that the crashed cargo plane was carrying a biological weapon and a Rhabdoviridae prototype — that’s the family of viruses associated with diseases like rabies encephalitis, hence the infected townspeople's violent behavior.
So, how is The Crazies like The Last of Us? Well, the soldiers sure act a lot like FEDRA personnel. In addition to setting up a quarantine zone, the soldiers in The Crazies kill civilians pretty indiscriminately. At first, it seems as though they’re only there to contain infected townspeople — though their methods are less-than-humane — but it’s later revealed that they’ve been ordered to kill anyone from Ogden Marsh, even if they aren’t showing symptoms of the infection.
Fans of The Last of Us will likely recall the series’ pilot, during which Joel Miller (Pascal), and his brother and daughter — Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Sarah (Nico Parker) — are trying to escape the chaos of the first night of the Cordyceps outbreak. Despite not showing any symptoms, the Millers are deemed targets. One soldier kills Sarah, Joel’s daughter, without a hesitation.
Later, viewers learn that militaristic FEDRA set up Quarantine Zones (QZs) under the guise of protecting people from the Infected. Of course, FEDRA is corrupt and commits awful atrocities, all to consolidate their power and retain control over the masses. While FEDRA holds power for decades in the world of The Last of Us, the soldiers in The Crazies act out their mission over a much, much shorter period of time. Still, the protagonists of both stories end up at odds with both the military and the infected. Sure, zombies are bad, but, in both The Crazies and The Last of Us, it’s a case of the “the humans are the real villains” trope.
How Does “The Crazies” Remake Compare To The Original?
Set in a small town in Pennsylvania, George A. Romero’s original The Crazies from 1973 opens with a man killing his wife and burning down their farmhouse. In this iteration, the David character is a firefighter, alongside his buddy, Clank, and both men are, notably, Vietnam War veterans. Here, Judy is a nurse and David’s girlfriend, though the pregnancy subplot remains.
Heavily armed soldiers appear, taking over the doctor’s office where Judy works. An Army plane carrying a bioweapon, with the virus code-named Trixie, crash-landed days earlier just outside the town. Same as the 2010 remake, this accident has left the town’s water supply very much contaminated with the highly contagious virus. Here, victims become hysterical and violent.
While U.S. government officials send the military doctor who created the virus to the town to work on a cure, they also issue martial law, quarantining the unassuming townspeople. Soldiers force people from their homes to the high school, and shoot anyone who tries to escape. Outside the town, transports armed with nuclear weapons loom. It incites the (understandable) paranoia Romero fans will recognize from the director's other films.
As the film continues, more parallels with The Last of Us crop up, from someone with a secret immunity to the hunt for a cure being a somewhat lost cause. Fans of Joel and Ellie’s story might find even more to enjoy about the 1973 version of The Crazies than the 2010 remake, which is certainly more about the action. Romero’s original film, on the other hand, might not be the director’s best or most well-known project, but it certainly provides the social subtext and anti-war commentary that compose the filmmaker’s legacy.