Tag: Zombie movies

This Is Not A Test (2025) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: A teenage girl who has spent years enduring abuse finds herself trapped inside her high school with five other teenagers when a mysterious outbreak turns people into violent, flesh-eating monsters

This Is Not A Test (TINAT) is not a new idea. I’ve seen 2 full-on zombie movies this year (TINAT, and We Bury The Dead, as reviewed here), and two zombie-adjacent (Cold Storage, as reviewed here, and Evil Dead Burn, as reviewed here), that’s just this year. In my lifetime I’ve seen a multitude of movies about them; Zombieland, Shaun Of The Dead, Warm Bodies. I’ve seen every iteration; fast, slow, comedic, serious, dumb fun, sharp social commentary. When you see an idea that many times, you do get a bit familiar with the tropes and ideas. So it’s not enough to just do a zombie movie. It needs to stand out. Either by being overly stylized, or having a gimmick.

TINAT does none of those things. It has a few ideas but not enough to carry the film. The closing credits being presented like a high school yearbook is pretty clever, and genuinely inventive. But nothing else is as new as that. For most of the run-time, it’s just a movie that exists. For long periods of time, it doesn’t even feel like a zombie movie. And unlike my review of We Bury The Dead, I don’t mean that as a compliment. That movie used zombies as a way of exploring humanity. TINAT doesn’t do that, instead it uses zombies because the writer wanted to make a zombie movie.

Some of my reviews are very easy to write, the one for Minions And Monsters basically wrote itself. This is much harder to write because, at some point, I just stopped giving a shit

It’s not helped by the characters. We’re locked in with these people for quite a while, and it’s not a particularly pleasant experience. It’s not that they’re unlikeable or annoying, they’re just bland. There’s nothing about them that stands out. No unique traits, no hints that there’s unexplored backstory between them. They’re not people, they’re character outlines and sketches. They’re first drafts just waiting for an editor to expand them. This lack of characterisation makes it difficult to become invested in what happens to them. And then there’s the swearing. I love swear words in movies. But it feels like this film has too many of them, and uses them badly. They make the whole thing feel slightly immature. It’s not adult language being used as punctuation; it’s adult language being used as sprinkles on a narrative ice cream, sprinkled haphazardly without care or finesse.

The film also doesn’t seem to understand that there’s a difference between tension and simply being slow. A slow scene can build tension, but being slow doesn’t automatically create tension. There are stretches here where I was waiting for something to happen rather than feeling suspense about what was going to happen. And when there are dynamic scenes, TINAT turns to the handheld shaky-cam style. When that technique is used well, it helps showcase high energy and panic. When it’s used badly it makes everything confusing and makes it feel like the film is using it to hide something such as poor effects or the lead actor is actually in his 70s.

On the subject of action scenes, there’s also a strange inconsistency in what the film seems comfortable showing. It’s perfectly happy to show people being killed, but draws the line at a dad beating a teenager. Obviously, the latter is still horrible, but I’d argue death is worse.

Another example of the film utilising story-telling techniques but not in a way that really helps the story is the use of flashbacks. They didn’t feel like flashbacks, they felt like “and here’s what you missed before the commercial break” recaps from sports shows. Their placement in the narrative is ineffective, to the point where it feels like they were originally all at the start and then edited into later on because the film wanted to get to the main story quickly. It does kick off the story quickly, I’ll give it that. Another positive aspect is the cast. Olivia Holt is great as lead character Sloane, showcasing enough trauma to make her believable. Also, the make-up effects are spectacular for a low-budget movie. And I liked the character using temperature to gauge whether someone has been turned or not, very clever from that character.

Ultimately, TINAT isn’t terrible. There are some interesting ideas and a few clever touches, but I found it increasingly difficult to care about the story or its characters. For a zombie movie to stand out these days, it needs to give me a reason to care beyond the fact that there are zombies. Unfortunately, this one never quite found that reason. It’s not “the zombie movie told from the POV of the undead”, it’s not “the zombie movie with incredible action scenes”, it’s just “the zombie movie that has zombies in”. There’s nothing new. Nothing to convince you to watch THIS specific zombie movie over all the others.

Side note: For some reason, the opening scene made me think the film was set in England. Maybe that’s because I recently listened to the Anna and the Apocalypse soundtrack, but there was something about the opening that gave me that impression. Not at all relevant, just wanted to mention it.

Army Of The Dead (2021)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

So this film happened. This may surprise you but I actually haven’t seen that many zombie movies. Well, not the original ones anyway. Most of the ones I’ve seen have been modern zombie movies, ones which are self-aware and have already shown knowledge of the genre (with the exception of I Walked With A Zombie). So I have certain things I expect from the genre, most importantly you have to be bringing something new to the table. Sometimes that is just something as simple as making it incredibly slick. I feel that’s what they were going for here, they were going for a cinematic slickness which, combined with the heist aspect, would create something new.

The heist aspect never really comes off though. A good heist movie involves the main characters outsmarting people or tricking technology, neither of which occur in this. There’s the obvious double cross, but it occurs VERY early on, and the person hides their true nature for the rest of the film, so when they then turn on everybody else, it’s not a surprise as you knew he was going to do that. So it’s a heist movie without surprises, and really, without an antagonist. Because of this it doesn’t really work as a heist movie.

It has some nice ideas though, the opening credits are great (and very reminiscent of Zombieland), but even that has a downside if you think about it for a few minutes. Like there’s a scene where a Liberace-like character is getting ready to play piano as chaos unfolds behind him. Music is being played over this scene, and it has to be because if there wasn’t and you played it as a standard scene, you’d be able to hear the chaos behind him, which means you know that HE’D be able to hear it. That’s the problem with Snyder, he is so dedicated to getting THE SHOT that it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense. Also the film has decaying zombie boobs, because it’s clear his core audience is 14 year old boys.

Oh, and the zombies roar. Because they’re supposed to be seen as not human. BUT, they’re shown to be smart, they plan, they plot etc. And there is an element of humanity to them, they clearly understand the concepts of betrayal and negotiation, and they mourn the dead. The large setpiece at the end is brought about when the head zombie finds his dead partner was pregnant with a zombie fetus. There is enough information in that short sentence that means you could be mistaken for thinking this film has good ideas, but it does nothing with them. The ideas are woefully underused, and it’s a massive disappointment. I mean, there’s a moment where they talk about the rain bringing certain zombies back to life. The film then proceeds to not rain. Then why mention it? The film constantly talks about delicious steaks, then serves us cold porridge when it knows we’re hungry.

The characters……they are not good characters. Everybody is just different degrees of either shitty or forgettable. They’re not helped by the dialogue though, most of it is just generic shit.

Now onto the look. Normally with a Snyder film you know at the very least it’s going to look incredible. Well, not so much with this. This is going to be a personal preference but I HATED the way most of this looked. The way they filmed it in very high definition and the way they handled the cinematography made everything look fake. Specifically everything looked like scale models. So even though it’s all real, nothing looked like it. Perfect example here:

There’s also one shot choice which I personally found weird but you can disagree. There’s a moment where someone is talking “I’m definitely more important than that guy, oh. didn’t know you were listening. Okay, I’m definitely more important than that guy” whilst pointing at some people. Now, the camera never cuts away from this person, so we never see who they’re pointing at. Surely that’s just begging for a reaction shot of the people she’s talking about? If we don’t see the reaction shots, and we also don’t know who they’re even talking about, then what was the point of that piece of dialogue?

On the plus side: like I said, it had some good ideas, some of the performances are good, and it is good to see something new. Some of the deaths are damn brutal and I love them. Plus it has a zombie tiger. And I will always appreciate a film using Thea Gilmore’s cover of Bad Moon Rising.

Maybe it would have been better if the film wasn’t set so late after the zombie outbreak happens. If you hear “zombies in Las Vegas” you think of bright lights, you don’t think of abandoned buildings. With the exception of the sublime opening, the film never makes use of it being in Las Vegas. I get it, destroyed buildings and silence can add to a zombie movies tone to highlight the difference between before and after, but that normally happens with places we recognise, either in cities we know all the sights of, or in locations very generic which we’ve all been to (malls etc). There’s a reason the posters all highlighted the neon look, because that’s what you think of when you think of this location. You don’t think of various browns. There’s no reason this film is in vegas, and now I think about it, it would have made a lot more sense if it was set in Iraq or Afghanistan. Not just for the visuals, but also the militaristic nature of the survivors, and the willingness to nuke it and pretend it doesn’t exist.

So yeah, maybe see it, but not if you’re busy. Or just watch Zombieland instead.