Cooties Movie Review

Cooties is a horror comedy film directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion. The film revolves around Elijah Wood as Clint, a failed writer working as an elementary school teacher to pay the bills. However, on his first day at a new school, the children eat contaminated chicken nuggets and turn into child zombies. Chaos ensues as Clint and his coworkers try to survive against the zombie plague that can only be spread through children. 

I had a lot of problems with this movie, so I’ll start with the extremely boring set up. We are introduced to Clint, Lucy, and Wade. Clint has a huge crush on Lucy, but her boyfriend Wade keeps getting in the way. None of the characters are likable except the main character, but he is so bland and uninteresting.  Lucy is the typical love interest and Wade is the typical asshole boyfriend while the rest of the characters are just there. 

Clint begins to teach his first class and a sick girl takes a chomp out of another boy’s face. The boy is sent to the nurse and Clint doesn’t punish the girl because “I wanted to high five her, that kid was a dick”. Meanwhile, the bitten boy is being prepared to get stitches and suddenly the main character lost all of my interest. With the little girl and bitten boy on the loose, the rest of the children slowly start to become infected on the playground. Things start to pick up as the teachers realize the children aren’t the same. 

All of the characters are extremely bland and boring, but the situation they are in is pretty funny. Cooties was supposed to be a comedy, but most of the time the jokes fell flat and were very hit-or-miss. The comedy was also over the top and very repetitive, often repeating jokes that weren’t funny to begin with. Stupidity is a reoccurring comedy tool, which gets old fast. This would have worked so much better as a series of short skits instead of a whole TV show.  One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when a zombie knocks a teacher into a large cabinet and no one can save her because they don’t have the key to open the cabinet. 

The script was awful, which was disappointing because the concept was great. Characters are a huge part of any zombie film because the audience needs someone to root for. Unfortunately for Cooties, I didn’t care about a single one of the characters. I thought it was interesting that two kids were thrown into the mix of the teachers, but then the kids didn’t do anything or bring anything to the script. On top of that, their acting was horrendous.  There is also a cross guard who takes shrooms at the beginning of the film and he sits in his car watching everything for the entire movie. He doesn’t do a damn thing until an hour and 23 minutes into the hour and 36-minute film! To make matters worse, he was the most uninteresting, unfunny character in the entire movie. The writers tried to make a love triangle work between Clint, Wade, and Lucy but Lucy was unlikable and Wade was too much of an asshole that I didn’t care. Other than Clint loving Lucy, there is no other character development or motivation. At one point in the movie, Lucy tells everyone that she hates every single one of them (except Clint). She tells that to two kids and teachers who have done nothing visibly wrong to her. It was supposed to be a heroic moment, and was going to display how Lucy is done taking everyone’s shit, but it made me think less of one of the nicest characters in the movie because no one ever gave her problems.

The editing is alright, but I am sick of fast cuts whenever a zombie is on screen. This is a cliché for every zombie film that I want to die. The camera work is just alright as well, but is too shaky for my pleasure. The acting is pretty bad and always way over the top, but there wasn’t much the actors could do to save their characters from the script. 

Trying to ignore the bad characters, writing, and multiple loopholes (like when the lights go out at 4 pm and suddenly it’s night), Cooties did have a few moments that shined. The gore and special effects were great and I love how the studio wasn’t afraid to show the gore that comes with a zombie film except with all the zombies as children. There is a scene of a playground full of zombie children that was pretty funny and made me appreciate how much freedom the everyone involved had. The film also felt like a sick and twisted love letter to teachers and how much they do for children and our society. The last few scenes with the teachers fighting zombie were fun, mostly because the gore wasn’t restricted and they had creative weapons like a baseball shooting gun. The opening credits were very effective as they showed how the virus came to be and it definably made me squirm. There were also quite a few quotes that I enjoyed, including:

“How did this happen?”

“I blame rap music.”

“Why is Sex Ed always taught by the creepiest teacher?”

“Worst. Monday. Ever.”

“I’ve played Dodgeball a million times with these little shits. Go for the face, it’s their weak spot.”

“Naptime, motherfuckers.”

Overall, Cooties was a failed attempt at horror comedy and couldn’t be saved by the decent cast. If you’re looking for a dumb over the top movie to watch along as you laugh for friends, this is the movie for you. Otherwise, stay away. You don’t want to catch this film’s cooties. 

1/5 Starts