Rated R

First, the murderous drooling slobs in “The Crazies” are not zombies, OK? They’re crazies. There’s a difference. Though gripped with a familiar compulsion to behave very, very poorly, the recently afflicted of this story completely retain their capacity to use pitchforks and drive threshers, light matches and load guns. A subtle distinction, perhaps, but this makes life extraordinarily more difficult for any poor uninfected body unlucky enough to encounter them in the streets or the carwash or the backyard shed. Another thing the crazies retain, unlike their more fashionable zedhead cousins, is a distinct semblance of their previous personalities, albeit bewildered, homicidal, and frequently quite messy. This makes things downright creepy, often describing specific motivations behind the horrors they inflict, and points directly at what makes this remake, against all odds, actually work. These are not the senseless groaning killing machines we’ve become accustomed to. These are the people in your neighborhood—the school principal, the girl next door, the truck drivers and watrons and housewives—stripped of all negative impulse control and rendered incapable of stopping themselves from acting on all the most dreadful thoughts that cross their chemically addled brains.

While never forgetting its core as a campy low budget horror retread, “The Crazies” actually delivers everything you could possibly want from, well, a campy low budget horror retread. Based loosely on one of George Romero’s lesser known 1970s politigore thrillers, in which the population of a small town is accidentally contaminated by a secret military biotoxin, driving them down a very fast road to very bad decision making, we’re offered all the requisite elements for good ol’ po-dunk survivalist fun.

After the briefest of introductions to the town’s straight-shootin’ sheriff (Timothy Olyphant, “Deadwood”), his beautiful wife (Radha Mitchell, “Pitch Black” and “Silent Hill”) and trusty deputy (Joe Anderson, who’s a hoot, and really knows how to rack a mean shotgun), the action creeps up fast and almost never relents. Beginning with the sheriff’s discovery and investigation of the spreading threat to his community, the anxiety of the deteriorating situation takes hold immediately, and grows more palpable as each gruesome scene unfolds. By the second reel, a large contingent of faceless, heavily armed hazmat storm troopers has descended on the town to contain the contagion, wrangling and separating the hapless citizenry into fenced quarantines that bear no small resemblance to concentration camps. Naturally, they fail utterly in every way, the insanity quickly transcends the infection, and, believe it or not, subtle allegories begin to emerge.

The power of authority and responsibility is questioned on all levels. From the personal to the martial to the societal, the conflict between unbridled liberty and unchecked restraint becomes a pervasive, effective (and timely) theme, as do the consequences of sacrificing the one for the other.

As our heroes attempt their desperate escape, and insane circumstances begin demanding increasingly maniacal solutions, the divide between sober, rational thought and balls-out bugnut psychosis becomes progressively narrow. At what point does jabbing a kitchen knife into your neighbor’s throat become a perfectly sensible notion? Watch and learn.

Director  Breck Eisner (silver spoon chomping son of Disney ex-exec Michael Eisner), who’s been in director jail since 2005’s oft-maligned desert adventure “Sahara,” exhibits a deep understanding of the art of shallow cinema, and shows great enthusiasm in pointing and laughing at the very tropes he deploys. His set pieces come together with surprising ease; they’re never too stagy and are entirely tense, tight and shocking. He tosses out scares like trick-or-treat candy, and makes it very easy for an audience to be comfortable being very uncomfortable. Eisner has a deft hand at wringing the A-game out of a B-team, and a wonderfully developed sense for stripping down and updating material that’s gone well past its shelf life. As packed with crazy as this flick is, the most insane thing about it may be that, even for a cheapmo horror show knockoff, it’s actually really succeeds.

Originally published in The Wire.