352 | Adam Macdonald (This Is Not A Test)

My Summer Lair Chapter #352: If The Zombie Apocalypse Was A Test Would You Pass?

There is technically no difference between a zombie apocalypse and high school.

Both are emotionally brutal.
Both are socially Darwinian.
Both feel endless when you’re trapped inside them.
And both convince you — at their worst — that this is what life is going to feel like forever.

As I told my guest writer/director Adam MacDonald: what high school and a zombie apocalypse have in common is they both…bite.

Adam visits My Summer Lair to discuss his latest film, This Is Not a Test—a harrowing zombie adaptation of the 2012 YA novel by Courtney Summers. (Check out The Definitive Edition with Please Remain Calm, a revised and expanded edition of Courtney Summers’s cult classic with a novella sequel. Oh, yes!)

Adam is the writer and director of This Is Not A Test; while the outside world is ending, a group of high school students take shelter from the infected in their school. And soon they discover that the monsters outside are often metaphors for the unexceptional pain within.

This Is Not A Test deftly uses zombies to clarify.

It asks:
If the world ended tomorrow, would you finally fight for your life?

And more pointedly:
Why does it take catastrophe to remind us we want to live?

The movie opens with Olivia Holt who plays Sloane, and she’s so depressed she has written a suicide note. Ironically she doesn’t want to survive in a world that, it turns out, is slowly ending. This starts the movie. Sloane 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.

Adolescence turns everything into life-or-death stakes.
Well…so does a zombie apocalypse.

In this MSL conversation, we unpack:

• The Zombie Tradition: As he is a major horror fan, we do acknowledge Michael Jackson’s choreographed undead from Thriller but, sadly: they do not show up in This Is Not A Test. Man, those zombies were infected with impressive rhythm.
• The Zombie Apocalypse Is Cathartic: Why Adam describes This Is Not a Test as a deeply personal exploration of depression and hope. We unpack the apocalypse as a metaphor. The chaos outside mirrors the emotional chaos inside.

The Instinct to Survive: The zombie apocalypse is an invitation to explore depression, survival and maybe even hope. The question is never “Will they die?” It’s “will they make it?” And that only works if survival truly matters.

For fans of Adam’s previous work like Backcountry and Pyewacket, this is a masterclass in how horror can clarify our desire to live.

This Is Not A Test offers viewers a radical belief: sometimes the instinct to survive is stronger than despair. Survival is a choice. And that is Not A Test.

This Is Not A Test @ W • T • F

Host Sammy Younan

Recorded: Monday, February 16, 2026 at 10:45 am (EST)

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