Cooties
Dustin Chase
Being a teacher is a tough enough job, but when students start eating their elderly counterparts, Mondays take on a whole new meaning. Cooties rides the line of horror, gross behavior and stupidity like Jennifer’s Body, This is the End, or other over-the-top scary horror flicks. It’s a story about TV actors out of a current job, who ban together to fill out Fort Chicken Elementary where a terrible virus has turned the little ones into flesh eating monsters. If you have ever wanted to watch teachers beat the guts out of their children, Cooties might provide some twisted and comical satisfaction. After we get the initial joke and set up, this campy screenplay gets backed into a corner, with nowhere to go.
Clint (Wood) is substituting for a teacher at the same elementary school he attended as a child. He says he is doing it for the extra money (the 30-year-old has moved back home from New York to focus on his novel). He reunites with high school friend Lucy (Allison Pill) and is just about to have a moment, when chaos breaks lose in the school yard. Shelly, infected with a virus from the school cafeteria’s chicken nuggets, begins to attack others, spreading the virus to whoever she attacks. Clint and Lucy watch through the teachers- lounge window in horror as the vice principal is eaten alive. The faculty are now trapped in the school and must come up with a plan as the chicken nugget virus spreads throughout the town.
The opening credits sequence has one of the most vomit inducing title scenes I have ever seen.
Some of you may have trouble keeping your popcorn down during this flick. The opening credits sequence has one of the most vomit inducing title scenes I have ever seen. Directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion use embedded fears of improper food practices to gross us out and while the violence certainly done out of fun, it likely won’t sit well with parents or those actually working in the school systems. Screenwriters can’t resist poking fun of Wood’s height, as Wilson’s redneck character accuses him of sneaking around like a hobbit in one scene (although we see the joke coming a mile away). This isn’t Pill’s first time playing a teacher, you might remember her brandishing a gun in a small scene from Snowpiercer last year, here she is that annoyingly positive person we all hate.
Cooties is a movie based off of what probably started out as a funny joke, that could have even been turned into a hilarious skit. However, the joke quickly runs out of laughs and the only thing left to turn to is violence and outlandish antics. There are moments where Cooties is devilishly satisfying, but there are even more moments where the script seems to choose the most predictable path to move the fleeting film closer to its conclusion. The town name, teachers personalities, the fact that this virus can only take hold of the body if you haven’t entered puberty are all clever concepts, stuck in a rather mediocre fright film.
Final Thought
Funny and entertaining for about a minute, then the joke runs too long.