Filed under: cinema, future history, science fiction | Tags: alternate realities, cloudmakers, outdated technology, remembering the future, romero, tears for fears, the crazies
Following all that negativity, though, there is one good thing I have to say about the viral campaign for this – the (oh god I’m about to hate myself) Twitter account is pretty neat. The notion of having a part of a viral campaign just reporting on related real-life news ups the menace a little (a little) and weaves the fiction in a little neater than the Dakon/Pendrill site or the Ogden Marsh homepage do. I’m a bit surprised this intermingling has only cropped up in ARGs in the past year or so, though. I suppose the 8 years since The Beast/Majestic debuted isn’t that long, but still.
Anyways, for making it through that here’s some Tears for Fears as my gift to you.
Filed under: cinema, history, science fiction | Tags: horror, remembering the future, romero, sam elliott: cool dude, the crazies, usa! usa!, vietnam, why are you doing this to me
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?
