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Sep 21, 2015 By Stephen Danay Web Exclusive

Clint Hadson is a failed novelist reduced to substitute teaching at his former elementary school in the sleepy town of Fort Chicken, Illinois. When an infected chicken nugget sparks a zombie outbreak at recess, Clint and the rest of the faculty must band together to escape the school without being eaten by their former students.

Given the endless horde of zombie movies that have infected the zeitgeist since the early-aughts—28 Days Later seems to have been patient zero while The Walking Dead was the full-blown outbreak—it seems strange that zombie children have so rarely reared their tiny, ugly little heads. Safety concerns and a hesitance to show children being shot in the head are likely the chief reasons the sub-genre never took off. In those regards, Cooties–-co-written by Saw creator Leigh Whannel and produced by Elijah Wood’s genre-imprint studio SpectreVision-–manages to skirt the issue while still providing a reasonable amount of blood-and-guts zombie action for the discerning fan. First time directing team Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott linger on close-ups of the impressively disgusting zombie make-up and shots of children jump-roping with intestines, playing tetherball with heads, etc. They use quick cuts and offscreen reactions for the more intense sequences, i.e. zombie kids getting their heads bashed in. Purists will likely consider it a bit tame, but the techniques are in keeping with the aesthetic of the whole enterprise, which strives for a Troma-film-with-a-decent-budget vibe. Standouts in that regard include the throwback score by Kreng and a truly repulsive opening scene set in a poultry factory.

The film’s other major draw is the cast, which is a fairly eclectic who’s who of genre actors and comedians, all of whom play fairly obvious archetypes that feel more like tweaked versions of their popular personas than actual characters. Elijah Wood is the nebbish, self-serious protagonist. Rainn Wilson is the abrasive, red-neck gym teacher. Allison Pill is the sweet, prim object of their affections. Jack McBrayer is the goofy, shrieking closet-case. All do a fine job of elevating a script that lurches from comedy to action to suspense, succeeding in all, but excelling in none. Co-writer Leigh Whannel co-stars as the requisite weirdo who can’t hold a conversation without off-putting non-sequiturs, a joke that quickly wears thin and SNL alum Nasim Pedrad is woefully underused as an aggressively angry Evangelical Christian. Every performance seems calibrated to wacky, yet pitiful, which keeps the film entertaining even if you’re not actually rooting for any of the characters.

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Author rating: 6/10