My Review of "Cooties"

Cooties is a horror movie that came out back in 2014. It has some notable stars in it but make no mistake this is a very low budget movie. Fortunately, this movie doesn't take itself too seriously and it does make fun of itself sometimes.

The movie starts off with some unflattering imagery of how chicken nuggets are made. They're not lying as to how it's done so some might lose their taste for the favorite dish while watching it. During this process the nuggets are contaminated by insects in the vicinity. As a result, this is the main reason why kids start turning into zombies from eating it.

Meanwhile we get introduced to our main protagonist Clint. He's recently come home to this small town of Fort Chicken. Yes there are a ton of chicken references in the movie. We're all in on the inside jokes in this case.

Clint hasn't yet made it as a novelist and he's moved back home with his mother to work as a substitute teacher at his old elementary school. There he meets the rest of the teachers. All of them have a wild array of extreme characteristics that make them seem like they wouldn't get along with one another. In a way they don't but they're going to have to later on if they're going to survive.

Things start going from one to a hundred real quick in this movie when some of the kids start attacking each other. Pretty soon the whole school is overrun by zombies and the small teacher faculty has to work together in order to get themselves out of the school alive.

It's a very simple premise and for the most part it works pretty well. Though they didn't have to add so many characters to the mix. I found that a lot of the characters were pretty superfluous but not even in a misdirection way. They have no rhyme or reason to be there and we give them some camera time.

I guess it's to give us viewers some comic relief or to give us a little variety in the movie but really this movie could have done well without them. Although there are one or two characters that I could imagine having bigger roles but were ultimately useless.

As a low budget movie you don't really expect a lot of special effects or big stunts. What they did with what they got was pretty well done. I thought the makeup for the zombies were done pretty well along with some of the practical stuff. We know it's not super big budget so most likely the audience will give them a pass even though some explosions and fires look meh.

What they did do well was have the right actors for the job. They got some pretty big actors for such a small movie. It's actually really surprising and I think maybe this is the main draw for a lot of people. At least the star power can get some people to watch this movie and I admit this is what suckered me into watching this movie.

There are some good tense sequences closer to the end but the movie's ending is kind of sucks. I didn't like how they just ended it like they did. It felt as though there was more planned but they didn't have the budget so they just conveniently ended it the way that they did.

Overall, I thought this movie was okay. There was a little bit of fun to be had with this one and a chuckle here and there. I wouldn't be able to recommend this one though. I have to give this movie a 4.5 out of 10. It was pretty lackluster for me but some people may enjoy it though.