messier object

Seriously, this poster is about a thousand times better than the new ones.

So.  They’re remaking The Crazies, Romero’s fourth movie (after his ill-advised dive into romantic comedy).  And as if the “of the Dead” remakes weren’t meh enough – cool opening credits sequences don’t really make up for a mediocre execution – this one looks to be just as middle-of-the-road.  While it’s always nice to see Timothy Olyphant getting work as a sheriff, the concept and apparent execution this time seem to lack some of the wild-eyed paranoia of the original.  That one had a sort of predecessor to the plague-zombies of late – intelligent humans bent on murder by a virus in the water supply, with a possibility of worldwide contamination – while the new one seems, from the viral marketing, to be more along the lines of the X-Files episodes “Red Museum” or “Blood” – evil chemicals make the good people want to kill.  Not that it’s ever a bad time for a Bhopal-referencing horror movie about the terrors of environmental degradation, but… why this one?

When I saw the first trailer, I have to say I was a lot more excited than I am now.  It was, according to Wikipedia, going to be set in Georgia, and when I saw these clips in the trailer it was hard not to think of New Orleans.  We haven’t really had a good Katrina-related horror movie yet, or even a good Southern horror movie that didn’t rely on the Civil War in quite some time.  Sure, there’s Left 4 Dead 2. (‘though I’ve still gotta play that, and, yes, I’m going to extend it to being Katrina-related even if the government is generally competent and not paranoia-inducing just because of where it’s set.  You’ve got to make due with what you get.)  But I thought the ’70s Vietnam-derived paranoia that runs rampant through the original – two of the main band we follow are veterans, and, I mean, it’s a movie about the U.S. Army wiping out a village while under threat from a runaway biological weapon – were going to make a really great match for a Katrina-based horror film.

See what I meant?

Great, then, was my dismay when I put together the slogan on the sign up there and on the header of this viral page meant it was going to be set in rural Iowa.  I mean, yeah, tranquil small-town Americana is a classic horror-within! setting and, sure, pollution impacts us everywhere.  But couldn’t they have just saved that for the eventual remake of Frogs?