how old are the kids in new movie cooties

But both he and Wilson suffer from catchphrase callbacks that get no funnier with their dogged repetition. Kwong is given a racist stereotype and eye roll-inducing 'jokes.' Whannell, grating as the comic relief in the 'Insidious' franchise, is surprisingly funny here as a flummoxed geek trying to make sense of this outlandish outbreak. Struggling with thinly sketched roles, McBrayer and Pedrad have little to do but toss out hit-or-miss one-liners and make faces at the massacre around them. This mystifying aversion to killing off its main cast means 'Cooties' is bloated by too many characters and their uninspired shtick. Instead, mostly random extras are offered up to the teeth of its ravenous tykes, inciting McBrayer to bellow 'Where did she come from?' when a rabid student misses Pedrad only to accidentally land on a previously unrevealed faculty member. The film stars Elijah Wood (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Lord of the Rings trilogy), Rainn Wilson (The Office), and Alison Pill (The Newsroom). Yet the script from Whannell ('Insidious') and Ian Brennan ('Scream Queens') rejects this zombie-movie trope. It's an ensemble so big you expect it will be whittled down by schoolyard carnage. With my eyes watering and my stomach flipping, I was primed to expect goods that 'Cooties' just doesn't deliver. Climaxing with an unsuspecting pig-tailed blonde biting into a deep-fried morsel laced with a thick, viscous vein of disease, the sequence not only sets up the film's plague, but also might be enough to put you off the cafeteria staple for good.

In a nightmarish parody of the opening of 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,' a montage offers a look not at the creation of mouth-watering sweets, but rather the nauseating process that transforms a sickly bird first into meat mush and then into chicken nuggets.

The directorial debut of Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion starts off strong, with a title sequence so disgusting that I was dry heaving by its final shot. Unfortunately, this zombie-kid flick lacks bite. Creepy kids are one of horror's richest tropes, having birthed such fantastically frightening films as 'The Bad Seed,' 'The Exorcist' and 'Let the Right One In,' as well as campier yet still freaky fare like 'Pet Sematary,' 'Children of the Corn' and 'Mama.' So I had hope for 'Cooties,' a horror-comedy that transforms booger-eating metaphorical ankle-biters into bloodthirsty literal ones.

How old are the kids in new movie cooties