This was a fun, dumb horror-comedy that got strangely panned on Rotten Tomatoes. Granted, I would never be tempted to watch it again (partly because it doesn't end at all really, other than cutting to the credits - it's as if it was meant to be the pilot for a series or something) but it entertained us for an hour and a half, and really, what more can you ask? Perhaps I wouldn't be so sanguine about it if it had a worse cast, but Elijah Wood is a very natural and sympathetic main character and people like Rainn Wilson and Jack McBrayer, as well as the (as Jami put it rather unkindly) cut-rate Kristen Bell knock-off Alison Pill all managed to elevate proceedings above simple disposable B-movie fare. I didn't like Leigh Whannell the actor (he plays the socially disordered science teacher) but he wrote an enjoyable-enough script. (He has lately gained respectability for the most recent "#MeToo" inspired The Invisible Man, but at the time was coming off Saw and Insidious, neither of which I am in a hurry to watch. The main complaints about this one from the critics were that it was neither comedic enough nor horrific enough, but is too much of the latter for children, but not enough for adults. I think it more likely that they found the premise - zombified children eating their teachers, who are forced to mow the little darlings down - too squeam-inducing. Maybe - I am leery of ever watching notorious '70s Spanish exploitation film Who Can Kill a Child? for that reason - but it's all played so cartoonishly, it's hard to get upset. There is some gore (particularly as the outbreak first unfolds), but it's a lot like that in Shaun of the Dead - surprisingly splattery for a comedy, but a comedy none-the-less. Actually, the most upsetting part of the film is the opening credits, which depict a chicken's journey from factory farm to extruded pink slime, which is then made into McNuggets. I can't help but wonder if this disgusting and all-too-realistic sequence (involving maggots, along with the cruelty) made few friends for the film among "the money people". This, of course, is the source of the outbreak, because the nuggets end up being served in the cafeteria of the school (in the small shitty town of Fort Chicken) that our hero, hapless failed horror-writer Clint (you can probably imagine what happens when he sloppily writes his name on the board in capitals when introducing himself to the class) is substitute-teaching in. When he pulls up to school in his very battered Prius (looks like the 2008 model I had which ended in a mutual suicide pact with a deer) he is pinned in when a giant truck (with a wide rear wheel base - a phrase that becomes a running not-hilarious joke) pulls in next to him and the gym teacher Wade (Rainn Wilson) swaggers out of it. On exiting through the trunk, Clint finds that somebody has already written "Suck a cock" (this is foreshadowing for later in the film, and there's a reason it says "cock" instead of dick) in the dust on the back window. He works out the culprit very quickly into his first class - it is Patriot (yes, that's his name - this film is not subtle - it also features a teacher who inveighs about Illinois's lack of concealed carry (probably rectified since then) and restrictions on preaching the gospel to elementary school students), a royal asshole of a kid (first seen exchanging "Fuck you!"s with his mother on the way into school) who has been held back, and who reveals he's watching porn on the cellphone he's not supposed to have (the acting principal has already taken away Clint's phone because he says it's a school policy - this will of course be a problem when the shit hits the fan, and it's a neat way of avoiding a common plot problem for contemporary films). Anyway, guess who's the first victim of the girl who "turns" as a result of eating the infected nuggets?
(He tries to bully her by pulling on her ponytail but it comes off with a bloody chunk of scalp attached.) Clint takes the savagely-bitten Patriot to the school nurse, so he is the only infected child inside the school when the real outbreak happens
(another policy of the soon-dispatched acting principal
is locking the children outside during recess) which means that he is able to let all the others in (only after Wade has had to sprint across the playground,
having been outside shooting baskets and not noticing the outbreak). Anyway, substitute school for mall and children for adults and you've got a Dawn of the Dead knockoff with occasionally funny dialogue and seasoned sitcom performers. What's not to like? Oh yes, the lack of an ending. But I figure if you've made it that far and you care that the film fails to end properly, it must have done a good job. Oh yes - it turns out the cause is bacteria, and it only affects the pre-pubescent. So adults, and even adolescents can (as Clint does) get bitten, it's just that you want to avoid being entirely eaten. And our plucky group of teachers manages to escape the school (after several not-exactly-original scenes of crawling around in the ducts) and get to the neighboring town (motto: "At least we're not Fort Chicken") only to discover that it's a full-blown pandemic (timely, eh?) And...?
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