George Romero has always had a knack for raising the deceased and having them dine on family and friends. This is true not only in his Night of the Living Dead series, but also in the lesser-known The Crazies (1973), where there are no zombies, just small-town yokels turned into the title killer loonies by contamination from a military accident.
Remade by Breck Eisner and produced by Romero, the film retains the horrific spectacle of friends and neighbors becoming murderous monsters — but not so much the political context of the Nixon administration and the military-industrial complex. As with the original, it's hard to say which is worse, the shoot-first army or the marauding maniacs.
Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell bring grit to the podunk sheriff and his wife, who endure the carnage, and the flick boasts many expertly gruesome moments without too much overkill. It's a smart meat-and-potatoes-and-gore throwback.
