Horror-tober 4: Cooties

"Circle, circle, dot, dot, now you've got a cootie shot." When a contaminated chicken nugget sparks the child zombie apocalypse, a group of teachers fight and outwit the little monsters to survive.

I have wanted to watch this one for some time. Written by the creator of the Saw franchise, Leigh Whannell, and writer for Glee, Ian Brennan. Hence this one has a demented plot but with a pleasantly dark comedic twist that you could expect from the minds of these two. Plus, the production company which Elijah Wood is a co-founder of, Spectrevision, has some other great movies to their credit, namely A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. So I had fairly high hopes for this one.

With this as one of the opening shots, how could you not want to watch what happens?

A zombie outbreak where only children are turned into flesh-eating monsters, because children are creepy (The Omen and Children of the Corn to name a few) but relentless killing zombie children are also pretty dang creepy. I guess where the title comes from is in the narrative, the outbreak only affects pre-pubescent children. Because I guess when you hit puberty you don't have cooties anymore or vice versa?

Anyway, Cooties also has a pretty fantastic comedic cast, Jack McBrayer, Rainn Wilson, and Nasim Pedrad. Elijah Wood as Clint was also much more enjoyable and believable than his go as the psycho in Maniac. I mean it is really hard for me to see him as anything but a sort of nerdy character anyway. Although this wasn't as enjoyable as some other dark horror comedies, such as Shaun of the Dead, it had some good laugh out loud moments and plenty of gross out scenes as well. The gore definitely fit in with some other zombie flicks with tons of gut-ripping and blood-gushing and some disturbing scenes with kids playing marbles with eyeballs and jump rope with intestines among other gory recess games. 

My rating:

Horror-tober 12: The Voices

Jerry works in a factory in the small-town he grew up in. Not really noticed by most of his coworkers, he interacts with an accounting girl and finds himself smitten with her. When she doesn't show up for their "date", things get a little sour for Jerry. Oh, and he also thinks his animals are talking to him.

I'm a little on the fence for the rating of this one. I liked it because it did a dark comedy horror pretty well. But I was almost also rooting for Jerry to be OK and not make some of the decisions he did. So really it made me feel weird about "rooting" for the psycho killer but also wanting him to get caught and/or killed himself. Very conflicting feelings for this one. It is darkly funny and a bit macabre. Ridiculous but also really well written.

Not until a bit later did I realize that the voices Jerry was hearing were actually Ryan Reynolds doing them (which makes sense because they are the voices he creates as he dips deeper into his madness). I mean, Mr. Whiskers had such a good Scottish accent I kept trying to place it and thinking that it was Chris (Mark Bonnar) from Catastrophe (Amazon TV show that is pretty good). Bosco, the dog had a bit of a Billy Bob Thornton quality. All in all, Reynolds has been a favorite of mine for awhile, yeah mostly because he is pretty attractive, but seeing him in this role was so much different and he was actually really good in it. Also features Anna Kendrick. However, it does not get a much higher rating because the climax was a little dull and by that point I got a bit bored with the whole story. But then the credits ran. What was THAT?

So I also have to mention that tonight it was a choice between two movies, This one or The Neon Dead. I had originally had chosen Dead because it was shorter but I watched the first 10 minutes and decided it wasn't worth the time. But I wanted to see some of what originally attracted me to the movie, so I fast-forwarded through some of it to see if it got any better. Not. Don't watch it. Other than the movie being shot pretty much entirely in blacklight to create the neon element, it was definitely a B-movie that can be skipped. However, I do like this mask still and am considering how to make one. Maybe they were trying to make something with an Attack the Block feel? Who knows. But, remember folks, part of the reason I watch these is so that you guys don't have to, I got your backs.

The Voices rating:

The Neon Dead rating. Although I just skimmed through the whole movie, felt like I needed to give it something: