‘Cooties’ will come back to haunt you

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Cooties stars Elijah Wood, Alison Pil, Rainn Wilson and Jack McBrayer.

Sydney Reynolds, Contributing writer

In our world, cooties are an imaginary disease made up by children — an innocent illusion used to ostracize peers. On the playground, if you’re infected by cooties, a classmate can protect you by reciting and drawing on your body with their finger. In the world of the movie “Cooties,” however, cooties turn children into bloodthirsty murderers. The condition is a food-borne virus that only affects pre-pubescent individuals and nothing can be done to prevent contamination — all the children of the city of Fort Chicken become cannibals. The epidemic begins with one suspicious-looking chicken nugget and a girl who clearly didn’t care enough to think twice about its inedible appearance. Once infected, children receive blister-like spots on their faces and mouths and develop an insatiable thirst for human blood.

This is the world of “Cooties,” directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion.  Inadvertently sucked into the epidemic, Clint (Elijah Wood) is a struggling writer from New York City who returns to Fort Chicken as a substitute teacher at his former elementary school. While teaching and working on his first novel, Clint runs into an old friend Lucy (Alison Pill). He and Lucy, along with four other educators, find themselves battling the disgusting and terrifying disease. Amid their own day-to-day crises of being 20-somethings in the education system, they are now also forced to face this horde of savage students. Their options are to escape the children and find a way to safety, or be eaten alive. The measures these characters take to escape death and the bond they create during this journey is exactly what makes this film spectacularly hilarious and frightening at the same time.

“Cooties” features a knockout and diverse cast, with Elijah Wood at the helm. The cast, featuring well-known comedians Rainn Wilson (Wade), Jack McBrayer (Tracy), Allison Pill (Lucy), Nasim Pedrad (Rebekkah) and Leigh Whannell (Doug), creates the perfect balance of comedy and horror. Each of these characters delivers perfect one liners, , which lightens up the morbidity of disease-ridden children eating human intestines and playing with the bodies of their victims. The cast brings just enough comedy to this bizarre and freakish twist on an infantile game, which makes the otherwise grotesque story enjoyable.

This movie may not be for the faint of heart, but if you can make it through a little bit of blood and guts, the overall tone of the movie completely overshadows the more sickening aspects of the film.

“Cooties” premiered at the Sundance FIlm Festival on Jan. 18, 2014 and will be in theaters nationwide on Friday Sept. 18.

A version of this article appeared in the Monday, Sept. 14 print edition. Email Sydney Reynolds at [email protected].