It began in the petting zoo.
A rabbit was the first to go. Enraptured by the sight of the tiny purple meteorite, which had just crashed into its enclosure, the bunny took a bite. It wasn’t long before the once adorable critter transformed into a fanged, gummy-like zombie. And with one bite with those sharp teeth, other animals at Colepepper Zoo transformed, too.
The chicks and sheep went next.
Down went the goats.
Then, they came for the monkeys.
Pretty soon, the whole zoo was gone—save for a wolf, mountain lion, capybara, ostrich, lemur and proboscis monkey.
But the gummy zombies are coming for them, too.
Our main characters, Gracie the wolf and Dan the mountain lion, aren’t animals who’d typically work together. But as their situation worsens, they begin to strategize and protect each other, slowly building a respectable friendship throughout the film. And they save each other from zombification a number of times, too. The other animals likewise overcome their natural animosities and differences to work together.
Dan, for his part, was recently brought into the zoo from the wild, and he longs to escape, not caring who gets hurt in his way. However, his experience with Gracie makes him realize that surviving with no thought for others isn’t the kind of animal he wants to be.
At one point, the survivors protect an oblivious baby pygmy hippo they pick up along the way. When some of the survivors have a chance to escape, they choose instead to turn back in an attempt to save the day.
The lemur asks if a bunny that attacked Gracie glowed “with a demonic light.”
The proboscis monkey attempts to claim leadership of the survivors by calling himself the “most evolved one here.” And when attempting to figure out how to open a gate, the monkey briefly clasps his palms together and says “om,” mimicking a Hindu meditation practice.
Nothing really, unless you count an animatronic lion and a zebra “kissing” in the middle of an automated show.
How do you successfully include zombified dismemberment in a PG-rated kid’s movie? You turn your zombies from “undead” to “gummified.”
These gummy zombies lose their heads and appendages throughout the film; when they do, these separated limbs continue to move and attack. Body parts detach and reattach like the pieces on a Mr. Potato Head. This hodgepodge of parts enables zombies to combine with one another, creating grotesque hybrid amalgamations of zoo-animal parts.
And when the chicks become zombified, the top half of their heads and beaks become detached from the rest of their bodies, bouncing on their oversized tongues and falling off, causing the zombies to have to pick them back up. One zombie’s eye falls out of its socket, though the zombie quickly picks it back up and reinserts it. And shadows on the ground make it appear as if some animals have hanged themselves, though we soon see that they’re really just stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling of a gift shop.
When that first rabbit eats the meteorite, it has a seizure on the ground before transforming. Each transmogrification typically includes the creature’s legs growing longer, its body becoming gummy, its eyes glowing turquoise and its teeth protracting into fangs. We see some animals get bitten by others. Though there aren’t any teeth marks or blood, these beasts still convulse when bitten. When zombified, the animals charge at the remaining zoo inhabitants with disregard for their own well-being, often crashing and causing their gummy bodies to get twisted and broken (before quickly repairing themselves).
The survivors knock heads and arms off of the zombies, occasionally remarking on how they’ve killed the creature—just before it gets back up. Gracie “drowns” one zombie in a sink before it emerges. Animals get knocked down. A monkey gets zapped by an electric fence.
We hear three misuses of God’s name, including one in Spanish. We also hear the profanity substitute “gall durn.” Otherwise, language is restricted to general insults and name-calling such as “fleabag” and “numbskull.”
We first meet Xavier in the zoo’s medical room. In between sentences, he takes hits of nitrous oxide from a tubed mask.
Dan and Gracie get knocked unconscious by tranquilizer darts.
While the film tries its best to be “tame horror,” some of these zombified critters might still be quite frightening to young children. For example, one amalgamated zombie (a gorilla mixed with a giraffe) opens its gorilla mouth to reveal a slowly extending giraffe head, likely referencing the xenomorph from Alien. And, in another instance, Gracie’s zombified grandmother attempts to bite her.
While transforming, one of the zombies audibly passes gas. The survivors have to endure the zombies’ goop and saliva. The animals have exaggerated features, which include the oversized rear end of a gorilla. A couple of young animals become infected, too, most notably a joey in its mother’s pouch.
We know that human zombies shuffle around, grunting about brains. But if a zombified chicken spoke English, it would probably demand grains.
Night of the Zoopocalypse is based on an idea by horror author Clive Barker about a child trapped in a zoo during a zombie apocalypse. Well, replace the child with a wolf, and turn the zombies into ravenous gummy monsters, and you’ve got Night of the Zoopocalypse, a horror movie made for kids.
Given that horror isn’t exactly the easiest genre to make into a children’s film, directors Ricardo Curtis and Rodrigo Perez-Castro had their work cut out for them.
“It was all about finding the perfect tone and balance between horror and comedy,” Perez-Castro said in a Reddit AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) thread promoting the movie. “Walt Disney’s mantra used to be, ‘For every laugh, there should be a tear,’ so we decided to go with our twisted version of that: ‘For every jump scare, there should be a laugh-out-loud [moment].’”
It’s not often you’ll see a zombie apocalypse rated PG, but that’s probably because this strain of zombification turns its victims into the same consistency as a gummy bear: When limbs go flying, there’s no blood or gore to be seen. And besides those technically violent moments, there’s not much else, content-wise, that parents need to beware of here.
Still, that doesn’t exactly make some of this movie’s scariest moments any less frightening for a sensitive kiddo who hasn’t experienced many horror films. It’s not on the level of Gremlins, I’d wager. Still, you’d probably want to see how your child reacts to the movie’s trailer before deciding whether you’d like to take him or her to see it.
After all, you don’t want your kid crying about these gummy zombies 28 days later.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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