This Is Not A Test at Toronto’s After Dark Film Festival: In 2025 Adam MacDonald has an impressive body count.
First as a producer, director and writer of Hell Motel on Hollywood Suite and Shudder. That was fun; though some deaths were gruesome it was mostly local horror. (It was the sweet vintage of once you can check in you can never check out. Oh, yes do check it out if you have either streamer.)
And with This Is Not A Test his 2025 body count grows thanks to all the zombies. Tragically, Test stays within the cozy conventions of the Zombie Apocalypse. (Do the undead count as a body count?!)
Indeed…it’s a zombie outbreak in Hamilton. It’s all based on the 2012 young adult novel of the same name by Courtney Summers.
Oliva Holt as Sloane Price, is introduced with a soft desire to kill herself in the bathtub. This starts the story. Sloane Price isn’t trying to survive, rather she’s attempting to escape pain. She’s haunted, depressed and suicidal. But then—there’s always a but—the dead rise and ironically her fight for survival becomes a valid reason to live.
Just as we’ve witnessed in every single zombie movie Sloane is forced to reclaim the will to live and it helps that she’s now part of a group of fellow teen survivors. Like her they each have their own issues as they assemble at their high school. (School or prisons? Where’s the best zombie holdout location? You need food, safety and protection…you can safely barricade in both. I give the edge to prisons…the barbed wire and the are guns.)
Not bad, so far…decent set up, right?
Frustratingly, there’s many opportunities in This Is Not A Test where the filmmakers could depart from typical zombie lore and try something fresh or even radical. They do not and instead shuffle along like the undead.
Fluent in horror writer/director Adam MacDonald offers all the classic zombie hits: zombies pounding at doors, a barricaded high school, existential dread, “did you get bit?” safety checks. You know these tunes.
Where Test struggles is it fails to properly balance the zombies with the trauma, grief, depression that is the classic teenage experience. (And I suppose the hallmarks of a Zombie Apocalypse.)
“I want to die, today” to “I don’t want to die, today” vaguely questions what makes life worth surviving is the movie’s emotional core. And even though these teenagers are trapped in school there are no Breakfast Club revelations. A lot of the characters express fast-food emotions, there’s no real depth. There is a bit of style over substance going on. As much I as enjoy the zombie elements.
Even when one of the teachers breaks into the school and startles the kids it’s difficult to trust him. However, it’s equally difficult to trust the youths as well. Which is another zombie greatest hits…they turn on each other. Sooner or later in a zombie outbreak everybody will turn. It’s all trust issues.
In its final act? This Is Not A Test never quite commits.
It flirts with heroic arcs, suicidal salvation, leadership, panic and emotional breakdowns but in the end it remains stuck between teen-agnst and zombie-horror. Other recent YA horror such as Clown in a Cornfield does a better job with youthful characters coupled with compelling horror.
See it for yourself: Independent Film Company and Shudder will release This Is Not a Test in theaters in 2026. Go! Just don’t expect an insightful and reflective Night of the Living Dead.
Sammy Verdict: You can stream this and it’s fine, no lies. But if you go to see it at the cinema, while not #PantsWorthy, it’s also alright. Not groundbreaking, but it passes the time nicely.
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.
