(Spoilers.) Kill-the-kids
time… laughing all the way. Perfect for the Coronavirus season, an independent "zomcom"
about a pandemic of cooties that turns kids into (intelligent), adult-eating
killers. Something similar was done in the British horror movie The Children back in 2008 (trailer), minus the
cannibalistic aspect and on a more-local scale, but whereas that film was depressingly
full-on serious horror, Cooties goes
for the laughs even as it ladles out the gore and guts and kiddie violence. And
while it is a far from perfect film, it is a movie that keeps you laughing and
that hardly deserved its fate of flopping and falling off the face of the
earth. But then, killing kids has always been a dicey topic, on screen or off,
and laughing about it probably more so.
Trailer to
Cooties:
Cooties is one of the
early films produced by Elijah Wood's Spectrevision production company, a
company that has to date released a diverse selection of art-house or
genre-bending horror like A Girl Walks
Home Alone at Night (2014 / trailer), The Greasy Strangler (2016 / trailer) and Color Out of Space (2019 / trailer) — films one and
all that reveal a production company that aims to do stuff differently. Or at
least a little bit outside the box — though we would argue films like The Greasy Strangler never even ever
saw a box.
Cooties has seen a box;
many boxes, probably, and takes a lot of the familiar to come up with its funny
little narrative, but it speaks loudly that little if anything (until the grand
final) feels old or overused or forced. In part, it is the literalness and
dryness with which everything is handled that saves the film: no matter how
stupid the event, how ridiculous the verbal exchange, how sitcom-like things
develop, everything is delivered with a straight face. This, in turn, makes
everything twice as funny, even when in theory it probably shouldn't be.
Cooties opens by revealing
the source of the virus, which later is christened "cooties", after
that invisible imaginary childhood disease all American kids dread catching or
having. Modified bird flu, you might say: we watch the detailed, laughably grotesque
creation of chicken nuggets from the harvest to delivery, and then the little
girl, Shelley (Sunny May Allison of Ouija
[2014 / trailer]),
that eats an infected one. (The timeline of the film is a bit dodgy, to say the
least, as she eats her nuggets in the school lunchroom before the actual day
has even begun… it is doubtful, after all, that she ate them the day before
because the virus is later shown to spread, infect and turn virtually on
contact.)
And thus cooties
reach Fort Chicken Elementary, where Frodo, now a wannabe horror writer named
Clint Hadson (Elijah Wood of Sin City
[2005 / trailer], The Faculty [1998 / trailer], Maniac [2012 / trailer], The Good Son [1993 / trailer]), has his first
day as a substitute teacher. A school filled with brats, going by his walk from
his car to classroom, and neurotically normal teachers, one of which is his
former high-school crush, Lucy McCormick (Alison Pill of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
[2010 / trailer]),
and another her current boyfriend, the dicky PE teacher Wade (Rainn Wilson of The Meg [2018 / trailer], House of 1000 Corpses [2002]).
Social distancing, in any event, wouldn't have helped anyway: before the end of
playtime, the motley crew of bickering teachers has to face off with a school full
of murderous whippersnappers.
Most of the
events that follow are hardly new for fans of zombie films or shows, but
instead of being played out with dank and dull seriousness or for pure visceral
gore, Cooties goes for the laughs
even as the tension and danger (usually) remain real. Not very realistic, on
the other hand*: how many schools
have a socially stunted but scientifically minded (and dryly funny) teacher
like Doug Davis (co-scripter Leigh Whannell, of Dying Breed [2008] and Saw [2004 / trailer]) at hand to
explain everything as it develops? In the shortest of order, he realizes that
puberty brings immunity to the virus and that the kids are brain-dead — thus,
obliquely, making it okay to kill the kids, should one have to. The real goal
of the teachers, however, is simply to survive and escape — something impossible
without a little hand-to-hand combat with improvised weapons.
* Although, in all truth: when you're talking zombie
horror (if not most "creature" horror in general), can one really
complain about something not being "realistic"?
Cooties is not light on
laughs, many of which are not even horror-related. The quirks of the pre-cootie
kids and teachers and even Frodo's Clint's home life offers some good
chuckles, as do numerous lines said in passing, some of which you hardly even
catch. (Just as the defensive attack begins —Tracy [Jack McBrayer]: "I'm
gay!" Rebekkah [Nasim Pedrad]: "I knew it!") But even for all
its laughs, Cooties also serves up a
scene or two of true tension, particularly when Clint and Lucy enter the air
vents to get some candy when the uninfected kid Calvin (Armani Jackson of The Last Witch Hunter [2015 / trailer], also with
Frodo) goes into diabetic shock. And when it comes to gore, most of it is
practical and not for the squeamish; for that, it's almost always used in a way
that gets at least a nervous laugh, if not a group-wide "Eeeeeeee"
(assuming you watch the film, as we did, with a group of people). The film, in
other words, is a lot of bloody fun!
Which isn't to
say that Cooties doesn't have some
glaring narrative and structural flaws. Aside for the previously mentioned
indistinct timeline of the occurrences, for example, the movie is extremely
recalcitrant about losing its teachers once the cootie kids kill the minor
characters like the vice principle (co-scriptwriter Ian Brennan), his
secretary, the nurse, Sheriff Dave (Matt Jones of Red State [2011 / trailer]) and a teacher
so negligible in presence that when she gets killed, if we remember correctly,
the other teachers ask "Who was that?" And for being brain-dead, the
cootie kids are often amazingly designing in their actions — runners, not
shufflers, they know how to open doors, hide in wait and, early on, consciously
spread the virus.
As for the
uninfected kids Calvin and Tamra (Morgan Lily of X-Men: First Class [2011 / trailer]), once they
have served their singular purpose — Calvin, to give reason to danger; Tamra,
as proof that the virus infects only the pre-pubescent — they pretty much get
completely forgotten and shoved in the background to the point of invisibility.
And the final big set piece is oddly bombastic for the film that preceded it,
as if tacked on to help the film go out with a bang. Indeed, we learned later
that the ending is a re-shoot, the original ending as described online probably
being found way too much of a downer for the powers-that-be. (In that sense,
the ending is the polar opposite of the much older but equally unknown and
funny horror comedy, Idle Hands [1999], where the
bombast got junked for something a bit less pyrokinetic.) But one is hard
pressed to say that the open ending, perhaps up there with The Birds (1963 / trailer) as one totally
lacking resolution, is really all that satisfying — although, had the film been
the hit that it should've been but was not, it would've easily allowed a
sequel, if not a TV series.
Complaints
aside, however: Cooties is bloody
and funny zomcom that should appeal both to fans of both genres. It really
should've been a lot more successful than it was, and truly deserves
rediscovery. It is a perfect pandemic movie for a lockdown night of blood and
laughter.
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