Producers: Cybill Lui and Adam MacDonald Director: Adam MacDonald Screenplay: Adam MacDonald Cast: Olivia Holt, Froy Gutierrez, Corteon Moore, Carson MacCormac, Chloe Avakian, Krista Bridges, Joelle Farrow, Jeff Roop and Luke MacFarlane Distributor: Independent Film Company/Shudder
Grade: C-
The zombie apocalypse comes to a small town with traumatic effect on a group of teens who hole up in their high school. That’s the plot of “This Is Not a Test,” which Adam MacDonald has adapted from a 2012 YA novel by Canadian author Courtney Summers, who published an expanded version of the book in 2026; but since the movie was shot in 2025, it can’t have taken any changes into account. In any event, despite the fraught premise, the attempt to combine undead mayhem and teen introspection proves neither terribly scary nor particularly insightful.
As the movie opens—the locale is a place called Cortege and the year 1998, according to the local paper, and Holly Sullivan’s production design and Rachel Anderson’s costumes are nondescript enough to pass muster—we find Sloane Price (Olivia Holt), sitting in the bathtub and revising a suicide note as her abusive father (Jeff Roop) returns to the house and excoriates her over breakfast. Among the flashbacks that proliferate as the plot goes on, we learn that Sloane is despondent over the absence of her beloved sister Lily (Joelle Farrow), who’s escaped the horrible home situation but abandoned her in the process.
Suddenly the place is attacked by fast-moving zombies—no explanation for their sudden appearance is ever provided—and her father is killed. Running wildly into the street, she encounters the classmates she’ll spend the rest of the picture with—jock Cary (Corteon Moore); nice guy Rhys (Froy Gutierrez); and twins Trace (Carson MacCormac) and Grace (Chloe Avakian) Casper, who jump out of a car driven by their mother (Krista Bridges).
After mingling briefly with a terrified and unruly crowd, they make their way to a house, where Cary, already claiming the role of leader, disputes strategy with Mrs. Casper. It turns out the place isn’t safe, and in the attempt to escape Mrs. Casper is overtaken and killed, a tragedy for which Trace and Grace blame Cary; and the youngsters hightail it to the school, where one of the first acts is Cary’s brutal killing of the infected principal.
The teens barricade themselves in the school and hunker down, eating from vending machines and prowling the hallways to scope out threats. At one point they find a bottle of booze and share it in an interlude that’s meant to provide some John Hughesian character revelations, but they remain sketches. There are also occasional tiffs, especially between Cary and Trace, a hot-tempered kid who doesn’t take kindly to being bossed around.
But the major crisis involves their discovery of Mr. Baxter (Luke MacFarlane), an English teacher hiding in a closet with a gun. Their debates over how to deal with him—apparently, he was looked on with some suspicion even before the outbreak, and now there’s doubt about whether he’s infected—create tension, and that gun is a temptation that eventually proves irresistible.
Three more deaths follow, and the survivors decide to try to reach one of the protective centers the radio broadcasts keep reporting about. But before they can grab a car and drive the hundred or so miles to it, Sloane insists they stop at her house to see if Lily might have returned. That choice brings more running and a further loss. (For what it’s worth, Summers has already published a sequel to “This Is Not a Test.”)
The action sequences in the movie are relatively well-done, but that’s not hard to manage. All it takes is some jerky hand-held camerawork, a few extras willing to be daubed with fake blood and run around furiously, some quick cutting, and a pulsating music score to ratchet up the tempo. In this case the extras are accommodating, while cinematographer Christian Bielz, composer Lee Malia and editor Pamela Bayne prove anxious to be MacDonald’s accomplices. (Elsewhere, though, Bielz’s work looks underlit and dank, and Bayne lets things run on rather badly; the “suspense” sequences of the kids slowly winding their way down hallways and through neighborhood streets drag, and the movie clocks in overlong at more than a hundred minutes.)
The young cast try hard too, but apart from Holt, the script doesn’t give them much to work with, and even she has difficulty getting a handle on Sloan’s emotional shifts. Gutierrez and Moore fare reasonably well but can’t bring depth to guys who don’t have much of it, and MacCormac appears to wrestle with a character whose connection with his timid sister can be read as going a bit beyond mere brotherly concern. Among the adults Bridges and especially Roop come on too strong; in the largest part, MacFarlane struggles with an opaque character much as MacCormac does with his.
It’s really not surprising that “This Is Not a Test” is underwhelming. The zombie genre is tired, however fast the extras flail about, and its interesting aspect—the interior life of the young characters—isn’t sufficiently explored to make up for that. Like so many of the people of Cortege, it tries but ultimately succumbs.