Movie Monday (Tuesday Edition) - Cooties

Is horror comedy in some kind of Golden Age right now? Kinda feels like it. This isn't a genre built for lots of blockbusters, but there are relative hits (The Cabin in the Woods, This is the End, Zombieland) as well as some culty darlings (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Dead Snow).

I bring this up because I think Cooties had a shot to be a unique hit if it weren't in such a fertile genre right now, but some tropey, predictable choices and “select theater” relegation will likely prevent much more than cult status. The selling point is pretty straightforward: haven’t you always wanted to just beat the living shit out of all those asshole kids, but can’t because you’re not a sociopath? Well, you’re in luck, because you can beat the undead shit out of all those asshole kids instead. Zombies have always been a useful tool for absolving guilt about meting out violence onto other people, and making imminently killable enemies out of humans you’re normally obligated to feel bad about harming. I’m surprised this idea has never been tried on children before, but it’s 2015. The time has come.

Lions Gate Entertainment

Elijah Wood stars as a teacher who introduces himself as a writer, in so far as he has a first draft of a novel and a need to jot down story idea notes at inconvenient moments. He shows up to substitute at an elementary school summer program which sees the outbreak of a contagion, the kids quickly develop a hunger for human flesh, and a heightened relentless viciousness to go along with it. Most of the rest of the movie is a zombie siege in the school, a tried and true institution for horror movie cleverness.

Wood, who is also one of the movie’s producers, has the most unavoidably soulful, expressive eyes in Hollywood, and he is put to good use giving the audience a temperature read on characters’ subjective reactions. Without him to remind us, it might not be obvious that the characters are supposed to be terrified or perplexed, especially considering the antics of Rainn Wilson – a sardonic gym teacher living in his (long past) college football glory days – and the scene-stealing Leah Whannell, who plays a pathologically obtuse science teacher. And when you’re wondering where you’ve seen the restrained, levelheaded blonde teacher before, imagine her with red hair – that’s Alison Pill, the drummer in Scott Pilgrim.

Lions Gate Entertainment

Despite the presence of zombies and creepy children (both Hall of Fame horror concepts), Cooties isn’t out to scare the crap out of anyone. The carnage is played for laughs more than jump scares or queasiness. Even the spooky children’s toys accompanied by slowed-down music box nursery rhymes don’t try to raise the pulse much. Comedic child abuse has a proud tradition, from Billy Madison’s dodgeball rampage, to the Community cast’s revenge, to Cartman getting ground-and-pounded by a frat bro aggressive about hypersensitivity. These gags all work by setting up the victims as the deserving shit-bag little kid everyone has known at some point in their lives, but Cooties only really puts in such work for a couple of the students. So if you need a sense of justice to get a chuckle out of violence upon minors, that’s the weight that zombification is going to have to pull for you.

Cooties flirts a bit with the metaphorical about the impossibly daunting and thankless job of teaching in America, but it shines the most in small moments of comedy dialogue. Don’t expect a story arc that deviates much from the predictable – the reveal, the outbreak, the spread, the barricade, the mission outside of the barricade, the arming, the escape, the sacrifice. You’ve seen this zombie stuff (with minor twists to a few elements) before. What makes Cooties go is the idea of donning football shoulderpads and wrathfully trucking through crowds of overmatched children, Jack McBrayer at his Kennethest swinging an improvised spiked flail, and what a terrifying weapon a baseball pitching machine could be. There are even a few meta-gags good enough that I don’t want to spoiler them, but they generated a solid guffaw in the theater. The action, such as it is, climaxes ridiculously in the final act, but what are you wanting here, gritty realism?

Lions Gate Entertainment

Cooties won’t blow you away with its storyline, but the characters and scriptwriting deserve more love than it’s getting in theaters right now. I’m feeling an urge to evangelize it a bit, so consider this a friendly nudge to find one of those select theaters where it’s playing.