“This Is Not a Test” is “The Breakfast Club” Mixed with Zombies
It doesn’t take much to make a teenager feel like it’s the end of the world. Crushes gone wrong, tests flunked, and championship games lost at the buzzer. It’s hard living through one’s teenage years, and that’s before a horde of zombies is added to the mix. Based on the 2012 young adult novel of the same name by Courtney Summers, This Is Not a Test is the latest from Canadian director Adam McDonald. He’s built a career in the genre space, going back to 1999 when he was an actor in two episodes of the beloved series Are You Afraid of the Dark? With This Is Not a Test, he takes the primal fear of a zombie invasion and sends it back to high school.
This Is Not a Test opens in a moment of heavy sadness. The audience meets Sloane (Olivia Holt) for the first time as she’s in a bathtub, fully prepared to slit her wrists. A loud bang from somewhere off-screen is startling enough to make her get out of the tub and head downstairs. There, Sloane’s father (Jeff Roop) is eating breakfast. Things are icy between them and it becomes clear that people are missing; a mother, a sister perhaps. Their tense breakfast is interrupted by utter mayhem rolling through their quiet suburban street. A zombie outbreak of unknown scale and origin is taking hold. In the chaos, Sloane finds herself with a group of kids from her school. They decide to barricade themselves inside the school building until help arrives.
Photo Credit: Brent Robichaud
Even though this is a zombie movie, the real threat comes from within for Sloane. Yes, there are violent hordes outside that want to rip her apart, an unyielding army of the undead, but there’s a part of Sloane that’s envious of them. Of their sense of purpose, their desire and will to live. Life is something Sloane struggles with. We see that her father is abusive, and her protector, her sister Lily (Joelle Farrow), has left home now that she’s eighteen. To be alone in the house with the man who abuses her leaves Sloane feeling hopeless. She initially has the same sense of despair when it comes to the zombies. It’s through understanding that her life could end at the hands of the undead that Sloane begins to realize she would miss this world if she was no longer in it.
Courtesy of IFC
The easiest comparison for This Is Not a Test is to say that it’s The Breakfast Club if what brought those ragtag kids together was zombies, not detention. Sloane is a clear loner, while Cary (Corteon Moore) and Rhys (Froy Gutierrez) are the popular kids. Trace (Carson MacCormac) and Grace (Chloe Avakian) are siblings who have the tight-knit relationship Sloane misses. The kids barely have anything in common, yet they’re forced to find common ground. Not to write an essay at the end of a day’s worth of detention, but to stay alive. To live, as the kids discover, requires trust, sacrifice, and compassion, traits that don’t often appear naturally in the halls of a high school.
“We must be the stupidest people ever for having any kind of hope.” It’s a line of dialogue drenched in resignation. The kids have been stuck inside the walls of the school for days, weeks even, without any sort of word about life on the outside. While they may not recognize it at that moment, hope is essential. Without it, we descend into utter madness. This Is Not a Test is about survival, yes, but also reminds its characters and viewers that perseverance and life do not exist without hope. Before Lily left, she would tell Sloane, “One day at a time.” It was a mantra for the two of them, looking toward the day they no longer had to live in the home of their abuser. It’s these words that kept Sloane going before the zombies arrived and, hopefully, will guide her long after they’re gone. This Is Not a Test is a gnarly teen survivor flick that knows mental health challenges are just as dangerous as brain-eating zombies.
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