‘Night of the Zoopocalypse’ Review – Hysterical Horror Hijinks
At Colepepper Zoo, Gracie (Gabbi Kosmidis) is a wolf burdened with the fact that she lives in a zoo. Pack life has gotten boring as Gracie is sick of her Gramma Abigale’s (Carolyn Scott) constant warnings of the worst possibly happening and to always be prepared. However, the routine life of the zoo has left Gracie feeling like everything is mundane and predictable.
Suddenly, a meteor crashes into the bunny exhibit and interacts with one of the bunnies. The bunny soon changes into a rubbery, gummy-worm-like, mutant zombie and begins changing every animal in the zoo into rabid zombies.
Gracie is forced to form a pack of misfits to try to save the zoo, including a surly mountain lion named Dan (David Harbour, Stranger Things), a movie-infatuated lemur named Xavier (Pierre Simpson), a spicy capybara named Frida (Heather Loreto), a pompous proboscis monkey named Felix (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee), a cynical ostrich named Ash (Scott Thompson, Kids in the Hall), and a baby pygmy hippo named Poot (Christina Nova).
Night of the Zoopocalypse is based on a concept by Clive Barker, of all people. Wikipedia claims that it’s based on one of Barker’s short stories, Zoombies, but according to an interview posted in the Clive Barker Reddit (the film has been in the works since 2015), Barker pitched the idea of the film while he was falling asleep, and the studio ate it up.
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Rated PG, the film is a CGI-animated comedy presented as a horror film. For an animated film aimed towards kids, Night of the Zoopocalypse is majorly horror-coded. Every sequence is drenched in dramatic colored lighting, dense fog, and heavy shadows. The film falls deep into the concept of creepy, crawly monsters lurking in the dark.
The film is being released by Viva Pictures (The Amazing Maurice, Inspector Sun) in the US. Animation was done by the Canadian-based animation studio L’Atelier Animation with storyboard and pre-production work done by House of Cool (The Angry Birds Movies) in Toronto. Night of the Zoopocalypse was directed by Ricardo Curtis and Rodrigo Perez-Castro. Curtis worked as an animator on films such as The Iron Giant, Shrek, and Monsters, Inc. Perez-Castro was a storyboard artist on The Book of Life.
The animation in Night of Zoopocalypse is intriguing since its horror based concept works around a lower budget. Only the main zoo animals that haven’t become zombies have rendered hair, while the actual zombie’s stretchy blue skin probably took less time and effort to animate. The fog, distinct colored lighting, and sharp use of shadows keep animation on the backgrounds and character surroundings to a minimum.
Two screenwriters you’ve probably never heard of, Steven Hoban and James Kee, wrote Night of the Zoopocalypse. Apart from a 44-minute short film from 2000, this is Hoban’s only feature film writing credit. Kee has mostly written TV movies and single episodes of TV series from the late 2000s. His one feature film writing credit is A Christmas Horror Story from 2015.
The writers are worth mentioning because Night of the Zoopocalypse is outstanding. Clive Barker’s original idea involved a human kid being trapped in a zoo during a zombie outbreak. There are human caretakers here briefly, but the focus is strictly on the animals and the film is better for it.
There’s this unbelievably entertaining balance of genuinely unnerving sequences with laugh-out-loud dialogue and gags folded into a one-of-a-kind story. The zombies can be dismembered and beheaded without dying. They can also be completely broken apart at the joints and put back together like a Mr. Potato Head with the arms and legs in the wrong holes. This results in some truly unique and fairly nightmarish creatures that are along the lines of something ripped straight out of John Carpenter’s The Thing.
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You find yourself invested in all of the different character personalities. Ash is Squidward Tentacles and I mean that in the most flattering of ways; sarcastic, cynical, and always complaining. Poot is adorable and a lot like the baby possums from The Wild Robot as she gets kind of dark without realizing it at times. She’s more innocent in comparison though and is oblivious to most things because she’s just a baby.
The zombie animals are incredible as they’re these mindless creatures that bang their head against the wall, lick things they shouldn’t, and typically move in unnaturally unsettling ways. Xavier is arguably the best character though. Not only is he obsessed with movies, but he also has a French accent. He injures himself every night to stay in the infirmary, huffs on nitrous like Frank from Blue Velvet (it was amyl nitrate in Blue Velvet but humor me here), and watches TV until the sun comes up.
Night of the Zoopocalypse is an adorably terrifying and excessively fun horror comedy. You are completely invested in the characters, the gags are hilarious (the squeak toy and ball pit sequences are all-timers), and the finale is a gargantuan brawl of absurdity. Night of the Zoopocalypse is a frightfully crowd-pleasing safari full of whimsical buffoonery.
Night of the Zoopocalypse (2025), Viva Pictures
PROS
- Funny for kids and adults
- CGI animation with authentic eerie vibes
- The characters are a ton of fun
- A truly unique story
CONS
- Mostly none, but the cure is a bizarre outcome.
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