Cooties is a horror/action comedy that takes place in a town where a virus has transformed only the kids into zombie-like killing machines and it is up to a bunch of teachers including; Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, and Leigh Whannell, to survive the onslaught of those little devils. This movie is definitely not one to be taken seriously, there is a huge emphasis on the silly over the top comedy, and logic and realism is mostly thrown out the window for just some silly, mindless, child head smashing entertainment. Personally, i wouldn’t call this a horror as such, it has elements that would feature in horror films but the overall satirical tone of the film greatly overpowered any time the film tried to scare you so none of the horror moments really worked. There were a few moments where the music went quiet and you are waiting for something to happen, and then something appears out of no-where to shock you but it didn’t have much of an effect. Thankfully the silly OTT humour kinda worked for me and kept me somewhat interested for the entire generous one hour and 27 minute runtime.
But this type of humour would have turned out to be terrible if it wasn’t delivered in the right way by the cast. I have to day that the cast was actually pretty good, they played their roles really well and most of the humour was pretty well timed, some of it a little predictable but was still funny. I really liked Elijah Wood in this film, i thought he played a very likeable character, was funny, and you are always rooting for this guy to come out on top. He was the definite standout, but even the rest of the supporting cast added their own little bits of magic to the film and provided a good variety of different humour you would expect from the different caricatures. In any other film they would all have been overacting but in this film it was very natural to the characters and tone so they did their job there.
The first 20 minutes started off a little all over the place, it tried to introduce lots of smaller things that may or may not play a large part in the later parts of the film really quickly. But once the films main plot kicks in and you have your group of character established it becomes a somewhat enjoyable film for someone who can tolerate silly OTT humour. The ending was also kinda meh, it ended very abruptly just as it got a little more interesting. There was also quite a bit of gore in this film and i’m not bothered by it but for people who don’t like silly humour and gore then you are in for a nightmare.
But in the end, if you have ever wanted a film where you could watch multiple kids get smashed in the face by a baseball pitcher machine and laugh about it then watch this movie, it is not a good film but there is enough in it to keep you somewhat entertained. – 5/10
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