Robert Hall talks The Crazies FX

It’s no secret that one of 2010′s better horror films was The Crazies. The film delivered on a great and maybe timely concept, filled with jarring and suspenseful moments by young director Breck Eisner. Even more impressive is the box office stab it made back in February against a Kevin Smith comedy and the dominate Avatar. Did we even mention that is was a remake? It broke the remake plague with many positive changes, including a great story and good acting, but when it comes to horror films, the talk will always be about the monsters.

Earlier this year, we talked to Toby Sells (here) about his helpful work in the film, after his stellar work in Zombieland, and he concluded one thing to me about The Crazies: “I’ll give credit to where credit is do: I was tagging along with Rob Hall. I was Rob Hall’s bitch!” The Crazies is coming back to audiences from Anchor Bay/Starz on June 29th on Blu-ray/DVD, and Killer Film catches up with the busy Rob Hall to reminiscence about the film and his work.

“The Crazies came to me by the way of my old friend and he told Breck to visit me. I think he saw my work in Quarantine, but they almost hurt me to an extent, since Breck wanted to make sure we didn’t do the same thing,” remembers Robert Hall. “I obviously, wanted to make sure that wasn’t the case either. Well, the great news for us, was that George Romero was on such a shoe-string budget, there wasn’t no “crazies” make-up. But it was on us to come of with a unique look for them.”

True, Romero’s crazies weren’t as elaborate looking, almost looking like his zombies from Night of the Living Dead, but in color. But this offered the team one of the chances to really do their own thing with the film, another key to its success. “It was mostly us trying to think what to do in doing something different. I heard through the grapevine that the Zombieland people were pointing to my stuff in Quarantine from Fangoria, saying that’s how they wanted to have their zombies look like. So I found that funny and reciprocal,” laughed Hall. “Luckily, for us, Breck did a whole years worth of research and came to us with a wealth of ideas that could work or wouldn’t work. It’s refreshing in that regard, just a big collaborative effort, that made us come up with some pretty unique stuff for the film.” You can read more with Breck Eisner here with an earlier interview we did at the time of the film’s release.

Working on a remake to a cult film can be a daunting task for a team, just because of fan’s loyalty to the said cult film. But there was no real trepidation for Hall. “I’m a giant Romero fan,” explains Hall. “But his Crazies wasn’t one of his stronger films. But what Romero was so tapped into with that film, it works better today for it. He was ahead of his time, so I was excited to work on a film that could become quote-unquote a better film. That’s exciting knowing when your going back to the shop.” It also helps to have a solid director behind the camera and Hall was appreciative of Eisner’s efforts.

“He offers a unique approach and is very detail-oriented. He blocked shots a certain way I would have never thought and I felt privileged to work with him to see his different take on things.” Like we noted, the film was a success, and that was all beneficial to Almost Human FX. “It certainly helped that The Crazies proved to be a good movie and turned out well and it helped our visibility, but things we are doing now are repeated business like Quarantine 2. It never hurts when you have a film that does well at the box office,” explains Hall. The film was budgeted at $20 million and grossed domestically, nearly $50 million all said and done.

The Crazies comes to Blu-ray and DVD June 29th.