‘This Is Not a Test’ gives less than the bare minimum

The beginning of Adam MacDonald’s “This Is Not a Test” is disorienting – and not in the way you expect a zombie apocalypse movie to be. 

We meet our protagonist, Sloane (Olivia Holt). She’s sitting in the bathtub and reading a suicide note, and it’s pretty cut and dry where this scene is headed. She’s interrupted by her dad, and when we meet him, we understand a little more what’s got her in such dire straits. Then, very quickly, zombies attack, and we’re off to the races. 

Before the zombies come into play, the dialogue between Sloane and her dad is almost impressively expository, a problem that will persist throughout “This Is Not a Test,” which is based on Courtney Summers’ novel of the same name. Through that dialogue, we learn that Sloane’s dad is abusive, her mom is gone, and her sister Lily (Joelle Farrow) also left not too long ago. However, we learn nothing substantial about Sloane as a character. And therein lies the rub. 

Visually, “This Is Not a Test” seems to be shooting for the style of “28 Days Later” (and reaching for that uniquely striking pinnacle only really betrays how visually dull the film is). However, the film’s core issues lie with the characters. This is supposed to be a story about a girl thrust into survival mode when all she wants to do is die – a character study shoehorned inside of a zombie movie. Holt gives it her all, but she and the rest of the young actors are given so little to work with, the film almost feels like parody. 

After the film’s cold open, we skip forward a day in time to find Sloane and a group of teens barricading themselves within the walls of their high school. It’s quite a jarring switch – who are these kids? What are they to each other? Will any of those questions be answered? Not beyond the bare minimum. 

Instead of developing details and relationships, most interactions between characters in “This Is Not a Test” amount to little more than information dumps. Flashbacks show us how Sloane and the rest of the teens found their way to the school, a journey that depends heavily on the tension between leader of the pack Cary (Corteon Moore) and the mother of two of the other kids, Grace (Chloe Avakian) and Trace (Carson MacCormac) Casper – and yes, there are siblings named Grace and Trace in this movie. 

That tension is meant to build to a terrifying climax, but it’s really just a not-so-subtle way of explaining to the audience how zombies work in this world (although that’s still pretty unclear by film’s end). When Mrs. Casper leads the teenagers into her home, Cary loudly reprimands her for turning on the lights and drawing attention to the house. She shoots back, telling him to stop yelling because, clearly, the infected are attracted to noise. Almost every single interaction in the film feels as stale as this one, delivering information instead of actually telling a story. 

Most of the action in the film takes place in the school, in what’s meant to be a sort of psychological exploration. But it’s difficult to do much exploring when your characters are nothing but vague impressions of teen stereotypes. I’ve never read Summers’ novel, but I hopped on the book’s Wikipedia page and read character descriptions after watching the film. Even those brief rundowns feel more layered than the characters we see in the film. When a key character dies in a horrific way, you know so little about them that the way the film lingers in the pain feels ridiculous rather than emotional. If “This Is Not a Test” is going for psychological thriller, it barely allows us a peek into anyone’s inner life, let alone Sloane, who is ostensibly the film’s lead. It sometimes feels a bit like “This Is Not a Test” is trying to make up for that lack of depth with gore (Sloane spends a majority of the beginning of the film with a face covered in blood), but even then, it falls short of the mark, nothing but empty spatter. 

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