A zombie apocalypse is in full swing, and a small group of teens must somehow survive. Will the moviegoer? Based on a 2012 young adult novel by Courtney Summers, This Is Not a Test comes with a bevy of adult-oriented content, from casual sex to frequent profanity to gore, gore and more gore.
Nothing like the end of the world to take your mind off your own problems.
Sloane had problems. You bet your biscuits she did. Her grades were low. Her mood, lower. Her beloved older sister, Lily, left home—leaving Sloane with their abusive father. She wondered whether it might be just easier to end it all.
But then the zombies come. And suddenly, Sloane’s not so ready to let go of the mortal coil just yet.
Sloane falls in with a group of fellow high-school students she barely knew before. (Let’s be honest, she barely knew anyone before.) And while she knows that she and her newfound pals—self-dubbed leader Cary, siblings Trace and Grace and a nice guy named Rhys—will be forced to smash a lot of skulls to survive, at least she has some new friends. And their old school, what with its high fences and reinforced windows, might be reasonably safe. Or, at least, safer than walking around their zombie-infested town.
Still, the school’s fruit cups and candy bars won’t hold out forever. Tensions are bound to rachet up the longer they’re together. And—
Wait a minute. Did you just see someone—something—skitter down the hall?
This Is Not a Test gives us a handful of survivors in the midst of a very high-stress situation. They don’t always respond to that stress well. But one teen apparently sacrifices himself for the sake of others. And when a mom faces her own imminent doom, her last thoughts are for the safety of her children.
Sloane’s own character moves from near fatalistic passivity to active engagement, showing kindness and concern for those around her. And that includes bravely confronting someone who hurts her (and has the means to hurt her again).
Rhys wears a cross necklace underneath his shirt, and that cross seems to mean something to him. When he makes a harrowing confession, he reaches for the cross and holds it—as if for reassurance and emotional protection.
Sloane spots two teens having sex in the school building. We don’t see anything critical—the participants are partly clothed—but sounds and movements make it clear what’s going on. Two other teens kiss tenderly during a rare moment of quiet.
During a game of “Never Have I Ever,” a high schooler admits that she’s had sex in one of the high school’s bathrooms. (There’s a bit of speculation as to who her partner might’ve been.)
Sloane and newfound friend Grace take showers in a locker room: We briefly see one girl’s back as she steps into the shower, but nothing more. Sloane also takes a bath, and we see her from the shoulders up. A woman’s belly button is seen briefly, as is some cleavage. We see a card deck featuring muscled, swimsuit-wearing men.
As Sloane sleeps, a mysterious hand gently, and creepily, touches her face. They later discover the hand belonged to their old English teacher, Mr. Baxter, who found his way inside the school. He later offers Sloane a leering smile and calls her a “beautiful girl.” His interest in the high schooler, however, goes no further.
Forget the shambling, classic zombies of Night of the Living Dead or The Walking Dead. This Is Not a Test features fast—and very, very hungry—zombies.
Most have blood-caked mouths. Many sport horrific wounds of their own, exposing bone, muscle and sinew. And they’re very happy to rip into the flesh of the living, tearing off hunks of skin with their teeth. One woman gets swarmed by a pack of zombie and essentially eaten alive. (We see her scream for a bit, then simply lie lifeless, her face covered in blood.)
The only way to kill the infected (as is typical with zombies) is to destroy their brains. And most of the time, those zombie brains (and skulls) are bashed with untraditional weapons. One zombie is “killed” with an old-fashioned phone. (Most of the attack takes place off camera, but we see blood spatter a window. And the phone itself is caked with blood and gore after the attack.) Another zombie is beaten with a baseball bat until his head looks like a spongy mass of gore. Others are dispatched more quickly: a shard of glass to an eye socket, a crowbar to the forehead. One is killed with a gun. Sloane spends a good chunk of the movie (so to speak) covered in dried zombie blood.
Apparent survivors can sport some pretty significant injuries from their travails, even when they don’t turn. One man—seemingly unaffected—suffers a nasty, oozing bite on his arm. Sloane gets covered in a great many bruises and abrasions, as do her compatriots.
But zombies aren’t the only peril that our human protagonists face. One survivor gets shot in the gut and dies from the wound. Another kills himself with a gun as someone else watches. (Blood splashes the wall behind.) And as noted, Sloane was considering suicide before the zombie apocalypse hit: We see her sitting in a bathtub, a box cutter sitting suggestively on the tub’s edge.
Dead bodies (or bodies seemingly dead) lie in streets and front yards. A few zombies seem to bump and hit inanimate objects repeatedly. A gas station blows up. We hear some harrowing survival stories: One teen talks about bashing his own father to death with a golf club—but not before his zombified dad ripped into the teen’s mother, too. Another survivor talks about how a companion had one of his legs torn away before getting bitten—and how that survivor then had to beat the legless companion to death. A survivor is kicked repeatedly in the gut. Others push and jostle.
In flashback, we see one of presumably many confrontations that Sloane and her sister had with their abusive father. Lily tries to stand between Sloane and their dad, knowing it’ll be painful. It is: The man hits her in the face and knocks her down a set of stairs before the camera moves away.
We hear at least 50 f-words and about 15 s-words. Also on tap: “a–,” “b–tard,” “h—” and “p-ssed.” God’s and Jesus’ name are each abused about five times.
The teens find a bottle of booze in a teacher’s desk drawer, and they immediately decide to drink it. (One asks whether they’re drinking because they’re all still alive or because they’re all going to die.) Instead of passing the bottle around, they decide to play drinking game. And while Cary initially refuses to drink, Sloane pressures him into it.
The basement in Sloane’s family home sports a well-stocked bar—leading viewers to wonder whether alcohol abuse played a factor in the father’s own abuse of his children.
Sloane vomits in a bathroom. She also regularly sneaks away from the group, which Rhys notes is probably not the wisest course of action. In flashback, Lily takes her father’s car and steals money from his wallet—in order to take Sloane to school and provide her with lunch money. Survivors debate the morality of taking stuff out of students’ lockers, since most of the lockers’ owners will most likely never be coming back.
Some of the movie’s biggest tensions go beyond zombies, dealing instead with how to approach conflicts among the living. For instance, Cary and Ms. Casper (mother of Trace and Grace) experience some serious tension as they struggle for control of a small pod of survivors. As they head to the school, Cary says that the streets are clear—after which Ms. Casper takes the lead and runs into said streets. She’s quickly swarmed by zombies, and the rest of the party questions whether Cary was telling the truth or not.
Another example: When Mr. Baxter shows up at the school, there’s a great deal of discussion as to whether he should be allowed to stay. He might be infected and trying to hide it, after all. And when bite marks are discovered on his arm (even though he’s still seemingly uninfected), the tables tilt away from him. But when he, in turn, bites one of the teens, the survivors must determine what to do with that victim.
This Is Not a Test, based on a 2012 young adult novel of the same name by Courtney Summers, is a low-budget, predictable, surprisingly effective and woefully grotesque zombie film. Despite its R-rating, it seems targeted toward teens, making the whole rating feel like a bit of a mockery.
The film itself is scarier than it has a right to be. And I appreciate some of its Walking Dead-esque feints to deeper questions that zombie apocalypses (apocalyi?) tend to beg: In the absence of any formal law, who chooses who lives or dies? Do unimaginable crises bring out the best in us or the worst?
But all that perhaps gives this low-grade, soon-forgotten chiller more credit than it deserves. The film is soaked in gore, inundated with profanity and designed, purposely, to appall.
In the end, the title of This Is Not a Test is a flat-out lie. While the situation is a test of character, the movie itself is a test of taste and endurance. And if we tested the film on a Plugged In bell curve, it would undoubtedly fail.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
