Adam MacDonald (director)
Shudder (studio)
103 (length)
22 May 2026 (released)
14 h
The zombie film has proved to be remarkably resistant to fads and while not quite at the level it was a few years back there’s a steady supply of titles coming out every year.
Sloane (Olivia Holt) is at home with her father (Jeff Roop) and they’ve just a had a row. Its angry and bitter so a knock on the front door is something of a relief. Only it’s a zombie who bites dad while sirens are sounding outside at maximum volume. Sloane runs out onto the street to see the mayhem of zombie attacks and people trying to run away.
A day later and the scene changes to a high school where Sloane (now covered in blood) and colleagues have sealed themselves in against attack. Flashbacks let the viewer how they got there.
It’s not long before the personalities start clashing with differing ideas of what to do and how to get out. Meanwhile the zombies are unrelenting in their attempts to get in.
This Is Not A Test isn’t breaking any new ground in the violence and blood-letting stakes, that’s all part and parcel of a zombie movie. Neither are the YAs (The film is adapted from a YA novel of the same name by Courtney Summers) in distress and argumentative anything new.
What director and writer Adam Macdonald has tried to do is work more on the tension of which he’s done a fair job and getting the viewer more involved with the panic of the situation. The latter relies on hand-held camera and POV though that soon becomes irritating. During the lulls there’s dull conversations and angst.
This drags the film until there an interlude when two of the characters have sex. To complicate matters more, one of their teacher’s Mr Baxter (Luke Macfarlane) turns up. They are immediately wary of him and so the seeds of mistrust and paranoia are sown. This later leads to a very unpleasant attack by one of the male characters on Sloane. It looks cynical and doesn’t sit well within a film which had been trying to do something a little different with this well-trodden sub genre.
This Is Not A Test will be on Shudder from 22 May 2026.
