BEFORE: This is another one of those films that was stored on my previous DVR when it crashed - thankfully most of the missing films seem to be on Tubi now, so it's good that I never took them off the list. This is the second time this week that Tubi has saved the chain, so, well, thanks guys, that's worth watching a few ads. They're doing good work over there at Tubi, saving movies that fall off of cable's radar or Netflix's voluminous (but not infinite) scroll.
Alison Pill carries over from "Trap". I'm aware that it's impossible to do a horror chain now without stranding a few films, there's nothing I can do about it. I've already made "Bones and All" impossible to link to, and now by watching this film with Elijah Wood I'm stranding "The Last Witch Hunter". I just have to move forward and hope that new films will come on to the list that create new linking opportunities, and then next August (or before) I can assemble a chain that will cover next year's horror slots, however many of them there will be. Thankfully, it keeps working out, but that may not happen at some point. Eh, who am I kidding, there will always be more than enough horror movies to watch!
THE PLOT: A mysterious virus hits an isolated elementary school, transforming the kids into a feral swarm of mass savages. An unlikely hero must lead a motley band of teachers in the fight of their lives.
AFTER: OK, so this is kind of the answer film to "Mom and Dad", which had parents filled with the sudden, uncontrollable desire to kill their children. This one turns that around and features a virus that turns children into zombies of a sort, with an uncontrollable desire to kill adults, umm, and eat them. Yeah. Not just their parents, but also the teaching staff at school - perhaps especially the teaching staff, I mean, who among us hasn't secretly wanted to kill a teacher at some point in their childhood? Every once in a while you just encounter a teacher who's either a total tool, or terrible at their job, or is holding you back in some way. Not often, but this could easily happen to anyone during a 13-year stint in the public school system.
But this is also an exaggerated version of how teachers see the children - they're gross, violent and completely out of control. Right? Plus they're little germ factories, if one of them gets sick then you can almost guarantee that they'll ALL be sick within days. They wipe their noses on their sleeves, they eat their own boogers, and they don't cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze. And the parents don't see ANY of that, or they pretend not to, so teachers really should get hazard pay, just for being in the same room with these "monsters" for 6 hours a day, and I bet it feels a lot longer than that, every time. Two months vacation just isn't enough for our nation's teachers, plus they're probably all overworked and underpaid to boot. The whole educational system probably needs to be burned down and rebuilt from the ground up, with a focus on the teachers' mental health. But no spoilers about the ending here.
Then on top of that, there are kids with autism, kids with ADHD, kids with dyslexia, kids with other special needs, and kids who are bullied, kids who are bullied, kids who are going through puberty, kids who need more attention, kids who have gotten too much attention, ugh, that all seems like a lot. But don't forget about peanut allergies, gluten allergies, milk, soy and shellfish allergies, kids who go vegan just to be woke, kids who are hypoglycemic and other kids who just eat too much. I was in that last category, except if I smelled parmesan cheese back then I would instantly vomit, so there was probably a janitor who cursed my name on pizza Fridays.
What's amazing is that somebody threw all this together and came up with a zombie film (essentially) that also remarkably predicted COVID five years in advance. The film has to explain to the viewers what a "pandemic" is, but of course, now we all know first-hand. Just replace "Wuhan wet market" with "Illinois chicken processing plant" and it's spot-on. Oh, well, replace "zombie appetite for human flesh" with "potentially deadly flu-like symptoms", and then this film would have been 100% on point. But kids killing and eating adults is just an extreme version of what happened during COVID, a lot of kiddos probably came home from school and unknowingly infected Pop-pop and Meemaw, and some of those senior citizens died as a result. There's no way to prove that, but most schools pivoted to remote learning for two years, just to be on the safe side.
(Also, the chicken processing plants in the U.S. have had their share of contamination issues, so this film is actually double-predictive. When you factor in worker injuries from sharp tools and repetitive tasks, environmental issues, the use of disinfectants and cleaning chemicals, biohazards like blood and feces, and the cold conditions required to reduce bacteria, those places are more dangerous to work at than coal mines used to be. How many times have we heard about recalls on chickie nuggs? This could be the most believable plot point in the film.)
But there's still a comedy at the heart of this film, the similarities to the actual COVID pandemic are uncanny but also completely unintentional. There's a love triangle between Clint, the substitute English teacher (and wannabe horror writer) his high-school crush Lucy (also a teacher) and her P.E. teacher boyfriend, Wade. Other characters are comical stereotypes like the closeted gay, panicky teacher, the Republican Karen teacher who hates that she can't teach creationism to her class, the vice-principal trying to be the hip, cool administrator who also has to take away cell phones, the stoner crossing guard and the health teacher who's so socially awkward he needs to read a book about how to carry on a conversation. It's hard to pick the weirdest one in the bunch, but hey, maybe you've worked among a sitcom-like group of weirdos, I know I have. (And if you don't know who the weirdest one is, it could be YOU.)
Completely far-fetched and also totally relatable is a great combination. So many depictions of kids killing teachers, followed by the reverse of teachers "killing" zombie kids, at least they take the time to explain that these kids are essentially brain-dead, so that makes it all OK. Maybe it really shouldn't work but it's so gonzo and over-the-top that it's very entertaining, it rises above the subject matter, somehow. If you can turn off the guardrails in your mind and just come along for the kooky ride. There's plenty of room in the giant dual rear-wheel truck, so hop in.
NITPICK POINT: At one point in the movie, the teachers distract the zombie kids by tossing a bunch of medications, including Adderall and Ritalin, into a room, and a few minutes later, all of the zombies are asleep. Umm, nice try but this seems like wishful thinking, a case of a screenwriter needing a thing to work a certain way, except it doesn't. Neither drug has sleepiness as a side effect, although adderall does cause more dopamine to be released from neurons, so it could have a calming effect, but both drugs are intended to increase focus and attention, so that sounds more like the opposite of the effect seen here. But, who knows, maybe the zombie thing changed their entire brain chemistry around?
I should point out that I was an associate producer of an animated feature called "Hair High" that was set in an Oregon high school, the story features two students who were killed on prom night and come back as zombies during the next year's prom. We promoted the film as a "zom-prom rom-com" - I really thought that was a clever bit of marketing and it would catch on. You can still find the DVD for sale on the secondary market or buy one at the animator's live appearances like NYCC, but also there could be a BluRay re-release next year, which would mark 20 years since the original release in theaters. So please watch for that.
Directed by Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion
Also starring Elijah Wood (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Rainn Wilson (last seen in "Ezra"), Jack McBrayer (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Leigh Whannell (last seen in "Aquaman"), Nasim Pedrad (last seen in "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"), Ian Brennan, Jorge Garcia (last seen in "Get a Job"), Cooper Roth, Miles Elliot (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man"), Morgan Lily (last seen in "X-Men: Days of Future Past"), Sunny May Allison, Armani Jackson, Peter Kwong, Kate Flannery, Matt Jones (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Rebecca Marshall (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Jake Brennan (last seen in "Dark Skies"), Mark Christopher Lawrence (last seen in "The Pursuit of Happyness"), Aiden Lovekamp (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Lauren Stovall, Jared Breeze, Nikita Ager, Angela Bullock, Elizabeth Bogush, Boni Yanagisawa (last seen in "Flight"), Lauren Katz, Brian Henderson, Tammie Baird (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Ashley Rae Miller,
RATING: 7 out of 10 magic shrooms
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