This Is Not a Test is a 2025 apocalyptic horror thriller written, directed and produced by Adam MacDonald, the filmmaker behind Backcountry and Pyewacket, adapted from Courtney Summers' 2012 young adult novel. Released in the United States in February 2026 through Independent Film Company and Shudder, it stars Olivia Holt as Sloane, alongside Froy Gutierrez, Luke MacFarlane, Corteon Moore, Chloe Avakian and Carson MacCormac. The setup is a genre staple: a small group of high school students barricade themselves inside their school while their town is overrun by fast, ravenous infected. It runs 103 minutes, and it needed to run considerably fewer.

Let me open with the fairest thing I can say, which I mean sincerely. This is not the worst zombie film ever made. It is not remotely close. I have watched genuinely dire entries in this genre, and This Is Not a Test is a competently assembled piece of work that clears that bar comfortably. That is a real compliment, even if it does not sound like a glowing one.

The frustrating part is that the film is genuinely good at the thing it is least interested in doing. When the infected are on screen, it works. MacDonald's zombies are the sprinting, shrieking, 28 Days Later variety, brought to life with strong practical makeup work, and the action sequences are imaginatively staged and satisfyingly gory. There is clear craft in those stretches, and every time the film committed to being a horror film it had my full attention.

Then it wanders off to talk. The dramatic material, which the film treats as its true subject, simply did not connect for me. It has been described elsewhere as taking a Breakfast Club approach to the zombie apocalypse, a group of very different teenagers forced into one room to confront each other and themselves, and I understand exactly what it is going for. I just found myself waiting patiently through those passages for the film to remember it had monsters. This is not a solitary opinion either, as critics made much the same observation, praising the make-up and the gory action while noting the film has a far harder time bringing its non-zombie characters to life.

Which brings me to the runtime. A hundred and three minutes is a lot of film for five characters in one building, and the pacing sags noticeably in the middle stretch. A leaner cut would have done wonders here. Compressing the drama, tightening the dialogue, and letting the tension build without so many pauses for reflection would have produced something considerably more effective. As it stands, the film keeps letting the pressure out of the room just as it starts to build.