Elijah Wood fights zombie children in Cooties trailer

The first trailer for Lionsgate’s horror comedy Cooties has hit the web, starring Elijah Wood and Rainn Wilson as two elementary school teachers who battle against a horde of pint-sized zombies. The nifty premise traces the onset of a virus which only affects those who’ve yet to pass puberty - meaning the adults are left unscathed while the students are keen to feast on human flesh.

Cooked up by Saw writer Leigh Whannell and Scream Queens co-creator Ian Brennan, who together wrote the script, the perils of early education have been riotously sent up in this initial trailer. Check out the gruesome action below:

“You can’t eat the teachers, man!” cries Wilson, in one of many self-aware meta nods putting a fresh spin on the undead genre. Energetic, knee-high killers more keen for a corpse than a crayon? Count us in...

Directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, and co-starring Alison Pill, Jorge Garcia, Leigh Whannell, Jack McBrayer and Nasim Pedrad, Cooties arrives in the US on September 18. No UK release date has been confirmed.

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Gem Seddon

Gem Seddon is GamesRadar+'s west coast Entertainment News Reporter, working to keep all of you updated on all of the latest and greatest movies and shows on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Outside of entertainment journalism, Gem can frequently be found writing about the alternative health and wellness industry, and obsessing over all things Aliens and Terminator on Twitter.