Clint Hadson (Elijah Wood) is an aspiring horror novelist who takes a job as a substitute teacher at Fort Chicken Elementary School. There he's reunited with his childhood crush Lucy McCormick (Alison Pill), who's now seeing the PE teacher Wade Johnson (Rainn Wilson). The classes appear to running as well as usual, but the chicken nuggets the kids have been served at the cafeteria have been laced with something dangerous. They contain a mutant virus that gradually turns them into cannibalistic psychos, and quickly of course an epidemic spreads across the school, meaning the staff must now save the day instead of teaching lessons.
In theory this should've really tickled my fancy as a horror comedy and with that cast but astonishingly, it lulled me to sleep. The narrative concept is brilliantly subversive, but to me there's just nothing immediate or assertive in any way about how it was executed. Jonathan Millott and Cary Murnion's direction lacks charisma and personality, and I don't think they cared enough about the comedy element to make that as prominent as screenwriters Ian Brennan and Leigh Whannell (who both also play minor roles) wanted it to be. Horror, and horror comedies, I think need to consciously try to grab you immediately and never let go until the end, and this showed for me too much of a slow-burn approach. Brennan and Whannell, to their credit, also fill this one with child characters who are quite realistic and pleasantly mischievous and obscene, and the cast all seemed to enjoy themselves, but the directors' approach struck me, as I said, as dull and very misjudged. I think it also needed a more rock-influenced soundtrack than the one it was given. Overall, these Cooties may be contagious, but I didn't find them frightening at all. 5/10.
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