Lots of gore offered in this lunch bag letdown
Cooties (out of 4) Starring Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson and Alison Pill. Directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion. 88 minutes. Opens Friday at Cineplex Yonge and Dundas. 14A
When one of the writers of the Saw franchise (Leigh Whannell) teams with a writer on Glee (Ian Brennan), you get a poppy-yet-gruesome, sitcom-style feature about a rogue chicken nugget that turns elementary school pupils into zombies.
It might have been timelier to release Cooties the weekend before school started up again, but its goofy premise may serve another purpose: reminding educators and parents that they may be getting a lucky pass with their schoolroom dramas.
The Hobbit’s Elijah Wood plays struggling horror writer Clint, who reluctantly returns to his hometown of Fort Chicken to pick up a supply-teaching gig.
He hasn’t had much luck with his novel about a boat with menacing intent. It doesn’t help when his oddball new colleagues in the staff room, gym teacher Wade (Rainn Wilson, The Office) chief among them, poke holes in his idea.
Worse, his one-time crush, bubbly teacher Lucy ( Goon’s Alison Pill), seems happily paired with scowling know-it-all Wade.
But love has to take a back seat to mayhem as the kids go on a teachergobbling spree and the adults have to find a way to escape the school and avoid the zombie rebellion.
If you like your schoolyard scraps with wonky humour and a liberal splash of gore, Cooties will provide some diversion. And while there are a couple of laughs, it’s not in the same league as similarly themed offerings such as Zombieland. Plus repetition makes it a bit of a lunch bag letdown.