Movies
[Sundance ’14 Review] ‘Cooties’ Carries Cult Classic Moments!
A decade after Saw premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, writer/star Leigh Whannell returns with his latest genre offering, Cooties, a horror flick about a school overtaken with kiddie zombies.
Bloody Disgusting’s Ryan Daley was at the premiere, returning with a mixed review that bends more towards the positive spectrum explaining that the film carries some cult classic-worthy scenes.
“Cooties has got plenty to offer––a few of its scenes are destined to go down as cult classics,” Daley says in his review. “But frustratingly, Milott and Murnion repeatedly follow up a hysterical scene with an incredibly bland one.
He adds: “In Cooties, the horror works, the comedy works, but all that drama keeps getting in the way.”
In the film starring Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson and Leigh Whannell, a mysterious virus hits a small Illinois town, affecting only the prepubescent population, transforming them into violent, feral little monsters. The virus centralizes in the town’s elementary school, and quickly the infected students have the teaching staff under siege, acting out deadly revenge fantasies with an eerie sense of childlike glee. Finally, the teachers band together, led by a hapless substitute who grew up in the town, realizing they must do the unthinkable if they hope to survive.
Movies
‘Abigail’ on Track for a Better Opening Weekend Than Universal’s Previous Two Vampire Attempts
In the wake of Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man back in 2020, Universal has been struggling to achieve further box office success with their Universal Monsters brand. Even in the early days of the pandemic, Invisible Man scared up $144 million at the worldwide box office, while last year’s Universal Monsters: Dracula movies The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield didn’t even approach that number when you COMBINE their individual box office hauls.
The horror-comedy Renfield came along first in April 2023, ending its run with just $26 million. The period piece Last Voyage of the Demeter ended its own run with a mere $21 million.
But Universal is trying again with their ballerina vampire movie Abigail this weekend, the latest bloodbath directed by the filmmakers known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream).
Unlike Demeter and Renfield, the early reviews for Abigail are incredibly strong, with our own Meagan Navarro calling the film “savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore,” ultimately “offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.” Read her full review here.
That early buzz – coupled with some excellent trailers – should drive Abigail to moderate box office success, the film already scaring up $1 million in Thursday previews last night. Variety notes that Abigail is currently on track to enjoy a $12 million – $15 million opening weekend, which would smash Renfield ($8 million) and Demeter’s ($6 million) opening weekends.
Working to Abigail‘s advantage is the film’s reported $28 million production budget, making it a more affordable box office bet for Universal than the two aforementioned movies.
Stay tuned for more box office reporting in the coming days.
In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
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