Breck Eisner is about to get cracking on his reimagineering of George A. Romero’s The Crazies, so he decided to chat with ShockTilYouDrop.com’s Ryan Rotten ‘cuz that’s what horror directors do. Seriously. It’s written into their contract.
Though Eisner has yet to assemble a cast (better be some Carl Lumbly in this shit), he’s just bursting with really good ideas that’ll transform Romero’s classic of the Vietnam era into something utterly routine and considerably less provocative. Here’s how Breck plans to depict the infected folks:
“They’re not zombies, the biggest challenge is to make it clear it’s not a zombie movie. What’s great about the original is that they all don’t have a coherent cohesive action, everybody acts different. There’s a kid, in our version, who just stands there punching a wall, punching his fists into a bloody pulp. It unlocks their deepest psychosis – some of it is violent, some of it is sexual, some of its self-inflicted violence. For me, the scariest movie for me as a kid was John Carpenter’s The Thing and the idea was not knowing who to trust, the guy you’re stuck with. It’s a similar concept here – can you trust your wife, can you trust your mother, your brother? That’s a good deep-seated fear for a horror movie.”
Kinda sounds like he’s remaking this.
In any event, he’s got lots more to say about his film (e.g. though they’re shooting Winnipeg-for-Pittsburgh, they’re at least consulting with Romero), so head on over to Rotten’s place and read the rest.