10 Sci-Fi Movies One Step From Perfection

2010 saw Hollywood try its hand at remaking George A. Romero’s 1973 sci-fi horror The Crazies, revamping the thoughtful, dark epidemic thriller into a mile-a-minute action spectacle. However despite this new style, a mash up of Zack Snyder’s then-recent Dawn of the Dead remake and the Bourne trilogy’s edgy, propulsive handheld action, the film managed to maintain the original film’s devastating critique of US policy both domestic and foreign.

Much like in 2002’s Danny Boyle zombie flick 28 Days Later, in this iteration of The Crazies the military and police are as formidable a force of fear as the titular infected, and the characters struggle both with the governmental response to an outbreak and the epidemic itself. Add a stellar pair of central turns from Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell and you’ve got a recipe for greatness, right?

Sure—or almost greatness, given the film’s ending. Cribbing its conclusion from 1995’s Jurassic Park rip off Carnosaur (never a good sign), the film sees its pair of survivors seemingly escape—only for an aerial view satellite shot to show that the military plan to bomb the next town they arrive in and continue quarantining, a process which has already proven lethally ineffective. It's a needlessly bleak and predictable conclusion to an otherwise surprisingly solid offering.