Cooties

2014 horror comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: School children become infected and start tearing their teachers' limbs off and pulling out their intestines.

Loads of intestines. I watched this and fully anticipated that it would provide some sneaky commentary on public school education, standardized testing, or the de-evolution of young people. There was a little bit of that actually, but it tackled a bunch very very shallowly, mostly because directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion wanted to get to those intestines. This starts hitting over the top early and often, blood-spattering the audience, almost grabbing the back of your head and shoving your face in the viscera. Good old-fashioned squelchy viscera. If that's your thing, you likely won't be bored, at least for the first half of the movie. But after a while, enough's enough and you're ready to watch something else. Or you're ready for a point to emerge. Or you're just sick of the jittery camera work during the action sequences that make the whole thing seem really cheap.

There are funny and creative moments throughout, and I really liked the opening credits containing horrifying chicken processing with some Elfman-esque music. That beginning was absolutely horrifying. Despite a handful of moments, a lot of the humor just doesn't work. With whiffs on Hobbit references and most of what Rainn Wilson shouts during the last third of the movie, this is really uneven.

It's an interesting first film for those two directors, and I'll look forward to seeing if they can create films more consistently good. Or maybe ones that have something to say.