It’s damnably hard to get the tone for a horror-comedy right – just ask Kevin Smith. Luckily, the trailer for Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s Cooties seems to suggest that this gore-filled laugh-and-scream-fest will be a cut above the rest.
Cooties centers on a group of elementary school teachers left to fend for themselves when a deadly virus communicated through chicken nuggets turns almost all the students into flesh-hungry zombies. As the infection can only take root if the host has not undergone puberty, the teachers aren’t at risk of catching it – but they do have to deal with being on every pupil’s menu.
The reception out of Sundance was strong, though our own Dominic Mill had mixed views on the horror-comedy. The directors have supposedly been doing extensive re-cutting since that premiere, so perhaps what’s coming to theaters this fall will be a stronger version of Cooties than he got to see. The new trailer, at least, promises a pic with boundless energy and gleefully savage wit, which any horror aficionado can tell you the genre needs much more of.
Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, Rainn Wilson, Jorge Garcia, Leigh Whanell, Jack McBrayer and Nasim Pedrad make up a killer cast for the film, which bears the following synopsis:
From the minds of Leigh Whannell (co-creator of SAW and INSIDIOUS) and Ian Brennan (co-creator of GLEE), produced by SpectreVision, COOTIES is a horror comedy with unexpected laughs and unapologetic thrills. When a cafeteria food virus turns elementary school children into killer savages, a group of misfit teachers must band together to escape the playground carnage. The film stars Elijah Wood (THE HOBBIT, LORD OF THE RINGS), Rainn Wilson (THE OFFICE), and Alison Pill (THE NEWSROOM) as teachers who fight to survive the mayhem while hilariously bickering in an uncomfortable love triangle on the worst Monday of their lives.
You can catch Cooties at the box office on September 18.