Format: Streaming video from AMC on Fire!
Is the zombie subgenre played out? I think you can make a pretty good case for that even if I don’t specifically agree with it. The problem with zombie movies is that it’s very difficult to distinguish one movie from another after a while. A movie needs to either be really innovative and do something different or it needs to be made so well that it can’t be ignored. The Girl with All the Gifts presented very different zombies and an interesting version of the zombie plague. Train to Busan was simply pure, high-octane action. Both work because of that. Since This is Not a Test doesn’t have the wall-to-wall insanity of Busan, it’s going to need to do something new.
Sadly, it does not. Zombies and high school kids is something that has been explored before and in interesting ways. Dance of the Dead (zombies at prom) and Anna and the Apocalypse (zombie Christmas musical) did something new. Kids trapped in a high school while zombies rage outside was definitively handled by the Korean show All of Us Are Dead. This is Not a Test follows a lot of the same path. There is a difference here, but it’s not a notable or interesting one.
I will do my normal look at narrative with this, but I want to give this the high concept elevator pitch first. This is Not a Test is what you would get if you wanted a zombie apocalypse in the middle of a television show like One Tree Hill or Dawson’s Creek. This is teen drama happening inside a zombie apocalypse, and while the zombies are certainly going to affect everything that is happening, they are frequently going to be secondary in importance to who is having sex with whom or who has an unrequired crush on someone else.
If that sounds odd and disappointing, you’re not wrong. I like zombie movies and I really wanted this one to be good. It simply is not. It is a teen drama with half a dozen people trapped in their high school dealing with each other while tangentially dealing with zombies outside.
Like many a zombie film, we’re not going to get any reason for what is happening; it simply is. Sloane (Olivia Holt) is interrupted from killing herself by the sudden appearance of zombies outside. We learn over time that Sloane’s father (Jeff Roop) is apparently abusive, which is why her mother is no longer living at home. We also learn that Sloane’s older sister Lilly (Joelle Farrow) has left home recently after a last attempt at protecting her sister from their father.
When her dad is bitten in an initial attack, Sloane runs, eventually teaming up with fellow high schoolers Rhys (Froy Gutierrez) and Cary (Corteon Moore). They are then joined by twins Grace and Trace (Chole Avakian and Carson MacCormac) and their mother (Krista Bridges). Mom sacrifices herself for the kids, who decide that the high school is the most easily defensible place. Why? I have no idea why a huge building with a ton of exits (and entrances) and ground floor windows would be considered safe, but that’s where we are. Inside, they kill off their infected principal and eventually find Mr. Baxter (Luke Macfarlane), who may or may not be infected and who claims he doesn’t remember how he got in the building.
Most of the movie takes place in the high school, and the undead in this film behave in a way that prevents them from congregating. This means specifically that the high school isn’t going to be surrounded by the undead. Our five survivors are “trapped” in the sense that if they get spotted by the undead they’ll be chased, but they don’t seem to need to actively defend the building—which is good, because there’s no way that five people could effectively defend a building of that size. What this means is that we’re going to have all sorts of time for people to blame each other for things and for some of our characters to hook up and for Sloane to be tragic and sad and attract the attention of Rhys.
It is, then, a minimal cast soap opera with zombies. To be fair, ever since Romero gave us our first cinematic undead ghouls, zombie movies put the characters in situations where the zombies are a threat, but other people are the true evil. In this case, though, the characters aren’t worth caring about and their conflicts with each other are petty and not about power or survival. It’s also inexplicable that this takes place in 1998. One of the reasons zombie movies tend to work is because, except in very rare instances, they are set in the present as if they are happening now. Setting a zombie apocalypse nearly three decades in the past immediately feels like the stakes have dropped, since it’s clear that it’s not based on anything that could be happening or might happen.
Annoying characters, virtually no actual zombies, and nothing blood-wise to excite even the lowest brow horror fan makes this a miss on all fronts.
Why to watch This is Not a Test: You just can’t get enough zombies.
Why not to watch: Everything here has been done better elsewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment