A mysterious virus hits an isolated elementary school, transforming the kids into a feral swarm of mass savages. An unlikely hero must lead a motley band of teachers in the fight of their lives. COOTIES is a horror comedy with unexpected laughs and unapologetic thrills. When a cafeteria food virus turns elementary school children into killer zombies, a group of misfit teachers must band together to escape the playground carnage. The film stars Elijah Wood (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings), Rainn Wilson ("The Office"), and Alison Pill ("The Newsroom") as teachers who fight to survive the mayhem while hilariously bickering in an uncomfortable love triangle on the worst Monday of their lives. If I could I'd give it more like a 5.5.<br/><br/>Its totally "watchable" but I definitely was bored and wanting it to hurry up and end shortly after the midway point when they ran out of ideas. <br/><br/>Rain Wilson is only kind of funny, Frodo is actually fairly funny. Leigh Whannell? I believe, the science guy. He's hilarious. While they unnecessarily explained that he had brain damage, the origin of which was also funny he seems to be the only one aware that there's no need to take any of this seriously. If prepubescents went on a rampage you have to admit, even in real life, you'd be laughing your ass off. Instead its all very checkbox. Kids go nuts killing people at a school, teachers band together to escape, occasionally something funny happens that no one comments on or laughs at unless its Doug the science guy who is just awesome in every scene. Part of the problem is that once the violence really starts, instead of directing around it they just have a bunch of older short people in bad make up pretending to be kids This is surprising considering Killer kids has been a theme of so many great movies. You can make it work, but instead they just kind of took the idea, made a generic zombie plot out of it and poorly improvised some jokes into it. I wanna recommend other stuff but if you've even bothered to watch this you've seen all the better funnier zombie movies. Dead Snow 1&2 are both better than this. Also if you find kids annoying or if you've got some weird older sibling complex again don't bother. The kids never get hurt and certainly not in any funny way. Your opinion and enjoyment of COOTIES will probably rely on what you want to get out of this movie going into it and how high your expectations may be. The movie gives you an entertaining hour and a half with a few laughs and a few good gore gags, but is ultimately a completely forgettable movie in a genre that is sagging under the weight of so many similar stories.<br/><br/>At the end this is just one more horror/ comedy, which in itself is no longer unique. Once upon a time, a movie like GHOSTBUSTERS may have been original for combining comedy with horror elements, but in the wake of SHAUN OF THE DEAD and ZOMBIELAND, the past decade has seen a glut of movies, in the direct-to-video market, that have tried to use the zombie movie as a backdrop for a horror/comedy hybrid. It's been done so many times now that it's almost impossible to present anything unique and memorable. The zombie itself is so worn out, at this point, that it's almost a turn off for me, as a viewer. I'm not sure I can stand to watch one more indie zombie movie.<br/><br/>I suppose you could give a few points for using the horrors of the food industry as the basis for the infection, but even this has been done before. Any horror fan worth their salt has seen the plot going back to Larry Cohen's THE STUFF. Sure, some might think it original to use only children as the monsters, but if you remove the thin zombie veil, then evil children is certainly nothing new either, tracing back to VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED.<br/><br/>Given that the movie is already bogged down under the weight of so many tired clichés, then it is forced to stand above them by presenting us something truly entertaining. Maybe I expected too much given this stellar cast. There are multiple actors here that I have really enjoyed in the past and it should have added up to, at the very least, a funny movie with plenty of humorous moments to save the day. Ultimately, though, I found myself laughing very little. The movie tries to hard to skirt the borders of both comedy and horror and, as a result, ends up failing in both categories. I never found that it established each characters quirks and personalities enough to root the humor. The cast is, maybe, too large to allow this to happen and several good comedians become almost background characters. The best comedy allows their characters depth so that the audience can feel the humor in each facial expression, but without that the movie is reliant on each written joke to come off and it never really does here.<br/><br/>The horror aspects of the movie are painfully average. There are a few moments that almost come through with some atmosphere and the gore is better than I expected, certainly, but I don't know that they were really trying to establish a truly horrific movie, so each time we get close, a joke pulls you away.<br/><br/>Getting back to my introductory statement, then, if you want a mindless movie for a Fright night that will make you laugh a couple of times, then you can do much worse than this. Just don't expect anything ground-breaking or a movie that will hold up to repeat viewings in any way. Despite the funny premise, Cooties doesn’t live up to its potential.
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