1093. Cooties (2015)

Starring: Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill

Director: Jonathan Milott, Cary Murnion

Running Time: 88 mins

Cooties is an American film about a writer, working as a substitute teacher at a summer school, who gets caught up with a group of other teachers in the outbreak of an epidemic of cooties, a virus which causes children to turn into zombies.

This is a completely ridiculous and stupid horror-comedy. It’s not the funniest film you’ll ever see, nor is it the scariest or most exciting, but if you take it for what it is, effectively a B-rated movie, you can enjoy yourself here.

Firstly, the performances are all very good. Elijah Wood is a likeable main character, as is Alison Pill, whilst Rainn Wilson gives a pretty funny performance as the idiotic sports coach. Therefore, despite the screenplay and the forced jokes not really landing so well (there’s a terrible running joke about dual rear wheels or something, it’s just not funny), the performances are fun and energetic enough to give you a reason to keep watching this movie with a positive attitude.

The action here is also relatively entertaining. Again, the whole cooties zombie thing isn’t that funny after a while, once the film descends into a stereotypical zombie movie, but some of the fight sequences and the portrayal of the infected kids is quite cool, making for some degree of excitement in the story.

On the whole, the concept is hugely bizarre, and I don’t really think it works out the way it’s intended to. Despite being likeable, you don’t really care enough about the characters to fear for them, whilst the written comedy is very poor, making for relatively few laughs throughout. However, it’s the complete insanity of the premise that does keep this movie alive throughout.

Ultimately, looking at this as a stupid comedy more than a zombie flick, there is some good fun to be had, even though it may not be the most exhilarating or pleasant thing to watch, and that’s why I’m giving this a 6.4.