PopHorror Let's Get Scared
I was extremely bored one night several months ago and was looking for something to watch on Tubi and ran across Cooties. I had never seen it or heard much about it so I decided to give it a shot and thought that it might be a fun little brainless movie. I mean come on, it’s about a bunch of zombie kids running around eating people, so it had potential to be cool, right?
So, after everything was said and done what did I think? Was it any good, or should I have just kept looking for something else to watch?
Keep reading to find out…
Synopsis
After a little girl eats a tainted chicken nugget and becomes a zombie the infection soon spreads to the other kids at her school, and all the adults find themselves running for their lives from the pint-sized flesh hungry ghouls that start eating everyone in sight.
When does ninety-five minutes seem like an eternity? When you watch Cooties. I can honestly say that it was one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life and it has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It’s poorly written, the acting is subpar at best, none of the jokes are funny, and there isn’t a single likable character in the entire movie. If the people behind it had put any effort into it at all it might have been a decent film, but instead it’s just a terrible movie full of gross-out scenes and horrible dialogue.
I’ll admit that the premise sounded promising. We have a group of teachers trying to survive a zombie outbreak at their school where just the kids are affected by the virus (or whatever it is supposed to be causing them to turn into zombies). Sounds like it could be fun, right? Trust me when I say that it isn’t and I should be given an award in endurance for being able to actually finish it. I didn’t like a single thing about it, and I feel like I lost some IQ points watching it (not that I had that many to begin with) and given the choice I would rather have a root canal than watch this movie again.
So why is it so bad? There are a ton of reasons but let’s start with the atrocious writing, which is painfully bad. Writers Leigh Whannell (Upgrade, Wolf Man), Ian Brennan (The Watcher, Glee), and Josh C. Waller (Raze, The Nail) should all be ashamed of themselves for unleashing this script on the world and it amazes me that it took three people to write this movie and this was the best that they could do. 99% of the dialogue is nothing short of cringe-worthy, not one single bad joke lands successfully, and the characters are some of the worst I have ever seen in the history of film.
It’s obvious that they didn’t put any heart or effort into the writing and just threw in whatever they thought was funny and hoped that viewers enjoyed it. In addition, none of them seemed to remember to write an actual ending to the movie as it just comes to a screeching halt at one point and it feels like they just decided to stop writing in the middle of a scene because none of them could come up with an ending.
Did I mention that the characters are horrible? Elijah Wood (The Good Son, North) is the main character and just basically plays Elijah Wood. Nothing about him is interesting or likable, and he spends the entire movie reading his lines with little to no emotion. Jack McBrayer (Queenpins, The Orville) plays Tracy and is one of the most obnoxious characters I have ever seen that I just wanted to die as soon as he shows up. Alison Pill (Goon, Dan in Real Life) looks like she would much rather be anywhere else for most of the movie, and I guess that Rainn Wilson (Code 3, Home Delivery) only agreed to be a part of this film because he had a car or house payment he needed to make and needed some quick cash.
I didn’t care for any of the characters as they were all so horrible I didn’t care if they lived or died and I found myself rooting for the zombie kids to eat all of them the whole time (not that any of the kids in this movie are anything to write home about either as most of them as just as horrible and unlikable as the adults). It’s like the folks behind the movie went out of their way to make every character in the movie unlikable as possible, and if that is the case they succeeded.
As you can most likely tell, I am not a fan of this movie and can’t recommend anyone seeing it. As much as I didn’t like it, I will say that the effects are decent and that is about the only positive thing I can say about it. Skip it unless you are into movies that try way too hard and aren’t as clever and witty as they think they are.
I know that this review may be brutal, but Cooties really is that bad. Save yourself ninety-five extremely long, laugh and scare free minutes and watch something else if you have a choice.
