Review: Cooties (2015)

You know when you say you have to be in a certain mood to watch certain genres of film? What sort of mood do you have to be in to want to watch a silly horror comedy? A weird one, probably! I don’t do horror at all, but when it’s a comedy I’ll give it a go. Throw in a couple of my favourite TV actors at the same time, and sure, count me in! That’s how I ended up watching Cooties the other night.

Cooties was never a thing in school for me, is it more of an American term? We still had the whole ‘don’t go near Sally’ but it was normally an actual disease like the mange or rabies that kids would decide upon. Anyway, Cooties is a fun little zombie-like comedy in which an entire school gets infected with Cooties, turning the children into flesh eating monsters. Trapped in the school, the teachers, including Clint (Elijah Wood), Wade (Rainn Wilson), Lucy (Alison Pill) and Tracy (Jack McBrayer) are left fighting for their lives.

I would firstly like to thank Cooties for making me never want to eat a chicken nugget again. Those opening credits were possible the most grimm thing I have ever seen, and was actually the most horrible part of the whole movie! Shudder. 

The plot and the general premise had all the elements of a winner, but also a stinker, and honestly I think it fell somewhere in the middle. It was funny, but it never made me laugh out loud. Okay, I laughed out loud once. But really, when is a kid shouting the ‘C’ word not funny?! It wasn’t scary either, which isn’t a complaint from me! I feel like it’s more of a horror spoof, but without the stupidness of actual spoof movies, if that makes sense. It was really enjoyable though!

I liked how it poked fun of other horror films. How many times have you sat watching a horror and just thought, if they simply took their mobile phone out of their pocket and made a quick call, they would be perfectly safe? Cooties knows how you feel, man. It deals with that for you. It also pays homage to a lot of 80’s action films, which is pretty funny actually. Rainn Wilson get’s some cheesy one liners that will make you smile.

Without giving spoilers, I just don’t know how to feel about the ending. I’m not sure if it was laziness in the writing, or simply opening itself up to a sequel, but I’m undecided. All in all though, Cooties was much better than I thought it would be, and is a half decent popcorn comedy.