by Jon Partridge
With the popularity of the zombie genre continuing unabated, studios seem intent on finding ways to put a new spin on tales of the undead. Cooties draws inspiration from the fictional childhood disease to craft a new type of infection which it fuses to a steak of black comedy.
A contaminated chicken nugget sets in motion a horrific chain of events. One child at a high school in Ft. Chicken, Illinois falls ill after lunchtime. A stomach ache and skin blotches soon turn into something worse; and when she attacks another student, the illness starts to spread, but seemingly only among the children. Soon, the security gates keep the ever-spreading illness within the school grounds but leave the teachers trapped as the children complete their transformation into ravenous, cannibalistic monsters.
The film itself sticks to a expected formula: the characters journey through the school, plans are made and go awry, they encounter infected kids, gory deaths occur, repeat. It’s not new, but done in a darkly comical way that you cant help but enjoy. There are some underlying plots, notably about Elijah Wood’s character Clint Hadson returning to his home town, where he’s not just dealing with his failed attempt to make it as a writer but having to encounter faces from his past, now working at the school at which he is substituting. This leads into something of a love triangle betwen himself, Lucy McCormick (Allison Pill), and her boyfriend, the PE teacher Wade Johnson (Rainn Wilson). Because a zombie outbreak isn’t sufficient for tension, we need to throw in the relationship angst between the survivors too. As ever, the zombie outbreak serves as a platform for people to look inward and step up and take control of the situation and their lives.
One of the most standout things in Cooties is the cast, first and foremost Elijah Wood but also Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill, Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad, Leigh Whannell, and Jorge Garcia. The plot and development of characters is a little light, but talent such as this compensates and provides a lot of the wit and humor in the film, which aims tongue in cheek jokes at the genre as well as the cast. Wood and Garcia get nods towards Lord of the Rings and Lost respectively.
Co-directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion shoot the film in a creative and frequently entertaining way. The opening sequence showing the creating of a contaminated chicken nugget effectively sets the tone for what’s to come. Quips fly as blood flows. The fast paced and graphic horror portions have good momentum, and while the laughs are there, they don’t quite hit the highs they aim for. With a short runtime and little of that afforded to character or story buildup, the film does feel a little thin substance-wise. This does undermine the payoff somewhat, no matter how well the latter portions are constructed. It’s a clever spin on the zombie idea, and while not groundbreaking is undeniably fun.
The PACKAGEThe film transfer is of good quality. The film is largely well lit and makes use of deep and bright colors, which all show up well here. Detail is good, blacks are deep in some of the darker scenes, and no artifacts are evident.
Special features include The Cootieary, a rather fun commentary featuring cast and crew. Complementing this is Talking Cooties, which shows video of the commentary being recorded. Circle, Circle, Dot, Dot. . .Catching Cooties contains a number of more standard interviews with the cast about the film. There are also a number of deleted scenes, a gag reel, and an alternate ending included. It’s a pretty well stuffed release.
The Bottom LineCooties is certainly entertaining but fails to really gel its humor and horror elements. With the concept and talent involved you’d hope it would turn out to be a instant cult classic; however, it falls shy of that. There is still much to enjoy and with a host of extras this release is worth checking out.
Cooties is available on Blu-ray from December 1st.