This Is Not a Test (2025)
There's a version of This Is Not a Test that really works. You can see it in the opening minutes: running zombies, genuine chaos, a rawness to the staging that feels earned rather than cheap. For a low-budget indie, the early commitment to practical effects and claustrophobic framing is genuinely admirable. Adam MacDonald throws you straight into the deep end, and for a while, you believe in the water.
Then the film retreats to a school, and more or less stays there. And waits. And keeps waiting.
That's the shape of This Is Not a Test, really. A strong, frantic cold open that promises relentless survival horror, followed by a long middle stretch that too often substitutes dialogue-heavy tension for actual dread. The zombies, so effectively designed and genuinely unsettling in those opening scenes, become frustratingly scarce. They pop up in brief bursts between extended sequences of characters doing what cornered people in zombie films always do: argue, splinter, make bad decisions. None of it builds to the kind of payoff that would justify the patience required to sit through it.
This is a trap that catches a lot of independent zombie horror. The ambition is real, the ideas are there, but the budget tightens its grip the moment the film needs to escalate. So instead of escalation, you get suggestion. Instead of threat, you get the implication of threat. I don't begrudge any filmmaker working within their means, and there are moments here of genuine dread, flickers of the film it could have been. The cast commit. The creature design is solid. But commitment and craft can only carry you so far when the pacing keeps losing its nerve.
Zombie fans will spend a lot of This Is Not a Test running a mental comparison reel, and that's not a comfortable place for the film to be. The frantic energy in the opening half-hour echoes Black Summer at its best. The tight survival dynamics bring to mind #Alive and Train to Busan, both of which do essentially the same thing with sharper character work and a more consistent sense of mounting danger. Even within the more action-heavy, pulpy end of the genre, something like Resident Evil: Extinction delivers the sustained energy that This Is Not a Test promises and then rations too carefully.
None of that is to say the film is a failure exactly. It's more a case of unfulfilled potential, which in some ways is more frustrating than outright failure. A bad film you dismiss and move on. A film that flashes genuine promise before pulling back repeatedly, that one stays with you in the wrong kind of way. You keep thinking about what a tighter edit, a slightly larger effects budget, or one more pass at the script might have done for it.
As it stands, if you're a genre completist or the kind of viewer who genuinely appreciates low-budget grit on its own terms, there's probably just enough here to justify 90 minutes of your time. The opening alone is worth something. But if you're coming in expecting the visceral momentum or narrative cohesion of the genre's better entries, you'll most likely finish it feeling like you've watched a decent short film padded out to feature length. The test is whether you have the patience for it. Plenty of people won't, and I can't honestly blame them.
Two stars.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2026-05-24
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Shudder · Shudder Amazon Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Philo · AMC+ Amazon Channel · AMC+ Roku Premium Channel · Shudder
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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