Cootie Call

Cooties (2015) is another one of those zombie horror comedies - not one of the best, but not too shabby.

It stars Elijah Wood as a sad sack wannabe novelist who has moved back to his old home town after spending some time in New York. He has a job as a summer substitute teacher, and he’s not too happy about it. He shows up at school in a beat up car and is immediately parked in by the Rainn Wilson, the buffed out gym teacher. The new-age principal confiscates his cellphone (school policy and convenient plot device) and sends him to the teacher’s lounge.

There he meets hostile Nasim Pedrad, spacey science teacher Leigh Whannell, and sweet Alison Pill. Wood and Pill went to school together, and he’s obviously sweet on her. Too bad Wilson is her boyfriend.

But the cafeteria had some bad chicken nuggets, causing one girl to go pycho and start biting faces off. Wood is not too concerned - he didn’t like the bitten kid anyway, and is more interested in his novel and trying to flirt with Pill. Pretty soon they are cut off with a few uninfected kids while the rest run around eating the other grownups.

There’s a lot of gross out gags in this, and a lot of just plain fun ones. When Wilson is insulting Wood, he calls him a little hobbit. Then there’s Whannell, telling people to keep quiet when they aren’t saying anything, and reeling off imaginary science. Also, in the gross category, handling body waste and parts with no gloves.

The initial joke is that Wood can’t focus on the life-threateningly horrible stuff going on because he’s thinking about his novel - a horror story about a haunted boat. Wilson calls it The Shining on a boat, like Speed II, which is a pretty good gag. Also, Pill - but she actually seems kind of dim.

Also, shout out to Jorge Garcia, who picked the wrong day to take shrooms. And Peter Kwok, who is barely in this movie.

I guess this went to streaming pretty quickly, and I can see why. But it does have some good gags, some gross gags, and good character acting. It won’t beat out Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead, but we liked it.