Cooties is horror comedy done right: splicing the grotesque and the absurd, injecting it into a chicken nugget, and giving it to kids so we can watch Rainn Wilson bash their skulls in.

Cooties opens with a disgusting tour of a chicken abbatoir, taking us from plucking to pink slime to the unnatural squish as a little girl bites into a diseased nug. It’s the kind of propulsive, in-your-face opening that horror is meant for; a sequence that spears the viewer to their seats and shrieks “this is blood and guts, this is real!” It’s a smart move for Cooties, setting up both the rabid zombie-kid outbreak to come and establishing this horror-comedy’s horror bonafides just before spending some set-up time with our cast of comedy staples.

Cooties Horror Movie Review

The Cooties premise is simple. It’s teachers vs. rabid monster kids and the teachers are Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, Jack McBrayer, Nasim Pedrad and Leigh Whannell, who is the surprise standout as a sex-ed creep utterly lacking in tact or a gag reflex.

Wood as a substitute eager to overshare plot points from his gestating horror novel is relatable enough to lead, but obnoxious enough to fit in with the other misfits. Rainn Wilson, whose schtick I typically find unbearable, is funny as the fragile but cocky washed up gym teacher.

The writing in Cooties is snappy, which makes it all the more surprising that McBrayer’s every line is a one-note “gay cry of help” and the movie’s second half introduces a lazily stereotypical Asian janitor with a convenient sense of samurai self-sacrifice to match his martial arts prowess.

But the real star is violence. Cooties succeeds as a horror comedy because it wallows in genuine brutality. And while a sequence that retrofits Night of the Living Dead’s zombie feeding montage with playground equipment is a little on-the-nose, much of Cooties is clever in how it doles out the blood and oozing pustules.

The attempt to expand the plot of Cooties past the schoolyard feels a little tacked-on, but it’s easy to see why directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion couldn’t resist a scene set in the monstrous labyrinth of a Chuck E. Cheese-esque ball pit and play tower.

Cooties isn’t going to dethrone any of the classic horror-comedies like Evil Dead 2, Shaun of the Dead, or Cabin in the Woods, but nailing this many splatter jokes should always be applauded.