‘This Is Not a Test’ Wants You to Come of Age in the Zombie Apocalypse [Review]

A good zombie movie can work wonders. Ironically enough, a solid bout with the undead can leave audiences feeling refreshed and wholly, unequivocally alive again. This Is Not a Test, written and directed by underrated horror mainstay Adam MacDonald (Backcountry, Pyewacket), is a good zombie movie. It’s also, despite its YA origins (Courtney Summers wrote the novel), one of the most ceaselessly downer movies of the year.

This Is Not a Test, no surprise given MacDonald’s unflinching genre background, will likely be a matter of taste. For the genre curious, it’s handsomely made, plenty tense, and postures as exactly the kind of undead flick you’d catch in theaters a decade ago. For the diehards, MacDonald peppers in several nasty, gruesome set pieces, including a clear homage to Zack Snyder’s 2004 Dawn of the Dead reboot. Everyone, however, is going to feel deflated. This Is Not a Test might be the title, though pretty regularly, it does test your endurance for trauma.

The aforementioned Snyder homage kicks things off. Olivia Holt’s Sloane endures some verbal and physical abuse from her father over breakfast before the undead come knocking. Dad is downed, and Sloane races off into the streets as the undead wreak havoc. The scale at times belies the budget, even if the digitized mayhem is distinctly fake if you look too close—fire remains the hardest thing to get right, huh? It’s tense, propulsive, and a promising start, even if the thematic throughline has more to do with the IPV than the, well, zombies.

Sloane and several other classmates seek shelter at the local high school, where the bulk of This Is Not a Test’s action takes place. There’s an incredulous flashback, jump forward midway through—an odd editing choice that adds little—though once This Is Not a Test settles into its sophomore groove, it’s one of the strongest zombie movies in years. Provided, of course, you can stomach the ever-increasing nihilism.