THE CRAZIES have invaded Central Georgia. Loosely based on the George Romero film of the same title from 1973, this "re-imagining," to use the words of director Breck Eisner (SAHARA, the forthcoming CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON remake), uses the original’s plot device as a starting point. Like the original, a mysterious virus is infecting the residents of a small town. The military invades the town, attempting to contain the situation and cover it up. From there, this new incarnation of the story takes off in its own direction. The remake stars Timothy Olyphant (HITMAN) as the Sheriff; Radha Mitchell (SILENT HILL) as Judy Dutton, the town doctor and pregnant wife of the Sheriff David Dutton; Joe Anderson (THE RUINS) as Deputy Russell and Danielle Panabaker (FRIDAY THE 13TH) as Becca, a hospital co-worker of Judy’s.

On a chilly night in Fort Valley, Georgia at the Peach County High School, Bloody-Disgusting spent the evening on set observing one of the film’s biggest scenes. Hundreds of extras are on hand for the elaborate shoot, which involves busloads of infected "crazies" being transported to an internment camp by the military. Helicopters swoop overhead and large military caravans are parked around the fenced-in area, ominous-looking military personnel adorned in green biohazard outfits and wielding large automatic weaponry. Fake movie rain is being sprayed overhead to add some atmosphere. Coupled with the natural winds and cold temperatures, the scene is as uncomfortable for those observing offscreen as it is the characters acting within the film.

"In this scene we’re lining up, basically heading to the concentration camp and we don’t know what’s going to happen to us," explains Radha Mitchell. "There’s been this situation where this chemical weapon has been dumped into the water supply system. This town has been infected, so everyone is sort of victimized by that situation."

This scene is crucial in terms of scope and in relation to the central character arc of the story. "[My character] has an elevated temperature because she’s pregnant," says Mitchell. "Of course they don’t believe that or they don’t care. So she’s going in one direction and he’s going in the other and its hopefully going to be quite dramatic."

When asked about her svelte figure in light of the pregnancy, Mitchell jokes: "Well, she’s not that pregnant. She’s, like, skinny pregnant."

Sadly, the Crazies of tonight’s shoot are only in the early stage of the infection, meaning there are no veiny, bloody, drooling infected racing around on the attack, at least not on this particular night. "There are five stages of "The Crazies," explains director Breck Eisner. "The first is before anything happens, the fifth is when you’re dead. The second stage is a performance-based craziness which is somebody you know acting differently but not looking differently at all. The next two stages are various levels of physical differences."

The image that most immediately comes to mind when you hear about "the infected" in a horror movie is something zombie-like, but Eisner says he and makeup designer Rob Hall have worked hard to differentiate from that look, using actual diseases as a reference point for the character design. "We had a lot of references. We used Ebola, Rabies, Tetanus. There are a couple of other disease references. We went through these really horrific books. We took Steven Johnson Syndrome ("a life-threatening condition affecting the skin in which cell death causes the epidermis to separate from the dermis," according to Wikipedia) and said, ‘What if instead of weeks it took 12 hours?’ But by the end of the movie its quite pronounced."

"There's a certain amount of medical accuracy you have to have," adds makeup designer Rob Hall. "Then there's a cinematic expectation, so it's trying to hover between all that stuff. And we tried to extrapolate on the real diseases... Then we combined it all and played with it a little bit."

"There's been a really conscious effort to steer clear of [QUARANTINE] and to steer clear of zombies," says Hall. "Our guys, they're full of this virus. They're almost like they're the opposite of dead. There's too much life in them so they're like bursting at the seams. Their faces are red and there are blood blisters and veins and they're very vascular."

"I think it looks great," Timothy Olyphant says of the makeup. "They did a great job. It’s really horrific looking. They are strained looking. Their bodies are kind of arched and their veins are popping out and their blood vessels are popping. Their eyes are kind of blood [shot]."

Once the infected go fully, well, crazy, they maintain some semblance of their former self and their former abilities and motivations. "It unlocks these deep latent qualities in people," says Eisner. "There are these hunter characters, for example, who we meet when they are in the act of actually hunting and they stumble on a plot point. Those hunters will come back in the movie infected. It’s not a zombie movie, it doesn’t turn them into creatures of a certain agenda. You maintain your identity to a degree or your drive or your persona. It just becomes extremely heightened and focused to a point of almost absurdity."

The production is centered in Perry, GA and shooting all around the Central, Georgia region. The state is offering a 30 percent tax break for film productions, which made the shoot a suitable double for the Iowa town of Ogden Marsh in which the story is based. "I really wanted the wide open plains," says Eisner. "It takes place in Iowa and we are doing two weeks [there] starting Tuesday. What worked nicely here is we could have that same scope. There are wide open spaces and old houses and this school (Peach County High School) and a truck stop and a car wash. It fits the look of the movie."

"I wanted this idea that our heroes are not trapped in small boxes, but open spaces that go on for miles and miles and miles. There’s literally nowhere to hide."

Olyphant describes his Sheriff character as a man who’s not quite ready for fatherhood, much less protecting his town’s citizens from a deadly virus outbreak. "He’s in a situation that he thought would be kind of a cush gig," says Olyphant. "And when the shit hits the fan, he thinks ‘This is not the job I signed up for.’ He starts from there."

Although his character wasn’t fully fleshed out when he first read the script, Olyphant was able to collaborate with Eisner in order to broaden the Sheriff Dutton character. "What I thought was interesting about it was tapping into that feeling of being an expectant father," says Olyphant. "No matter who you are, you just want to run and get out. You could be married for ten years and then the moment your wife’s pregnant, you just think, ‘Fuck.’"

Olyphant also says the title and the plot drew him to the project. "You have these scenes that are just nasty," he says with a grin. "Just downright fucking scary. And they’re fun. You’re always trying to find the humor without losing the truth of it."

The roles have been quite physically demanding for the cast, often in some unexpected ways. "My character gets tossed around," Danielle Panabaker says of her role as Becca. "We were shooting a scene in a barn and I got my arm hurt and last week I accidentally got hit in the mouth with a rifle. I'm totally accident-prone! It's Murphy Law: If it's going to happen, it's going to happen to me."

Panabaker says her character has a surrogate-mother kind of relationship with her Judy. When she is thrust into the survival situation with her boss, Sheriff Dutton and Deputy Russell, she has little time for bonding before the action starts going full force. "I love that it start moving right away," says Panabaker. "There are no secrets. There's something wrong in this town."

The military point-of-view from the original Romero film has been totally stripped from the re-imagining. When Eisner was brought on board the project, he says the movie turned to something more along the lines of a BOURNE movie rather than horror. "I wanted to get rid of the point of view of the military," says Eisner. "Any time you [have that], it goes away from horror and it goes to action"

"To me it was much more interesting being in the point of view of our townsfolk and with this oppressive, nameless, faceless force of the military and the bio-containment suits wandering around. That’s putting them through the terror [along with] the other infected Crazies that are roaming the town."

The result is what Eisner hopes will be a character-driven horror film, but that doesn’t mean the R-rated film will avoid from the blood and guts by any means. "We’re not shying away from blood and blood hits. Its visceral, but I wanted a real quality to it. It’s horrific and graphic."

THE CRAZIES hits theaters February 26, 2010 from Overture Films.

Full Crazies Report:

Click here for our set report
Click here for our interview with FX artist Rob Hall
Click here for our interview with star Radha Mitchell
Click here for our interview with director Breck Eisner