Stream It Or Skip It?

The animated anthropomorphic animal genre collides with quasi-zombie horror in Night of the Zoopocalypse (now streaming on Peacock), a harmless cartoon apparently inspired by an unpublished Clive Barker short story. Stranger things have happened, I guess. The movie appears to be somewhat hamstrung by a small budget, but it also seems engineered to introduce youngsters to scary movies. That’s admirable, for sure – will it be a gateway for eight-year-olds to watch Night of the Living Dead and Hereditary? That would be keen! – but whether it’s a particularly good introduction is the question.

The Gist: Setting: The Colepepper Zoo. By day, it’s a place of joy for all the kids who have to be yanked out the gates kicking and screaming at closing time by exhausted parents. By night, and this night specifically, it’s a haunted hell. But before we get to the meteorite that screams through the stratosphere and crashes into the petting barn with all the bun-buns and chickie-poos and converts everyone into glossy-eyed funny-scary possibly undead creatures who can lose their limbs and reattach them, we have to meet Gracie (Gabbi Kosmidis), a young – what is she now? A fox? Coyote? Blue heeler? Timber wolf? Yes. That last one. We learn that eventually, but until then, she’s a generic-looking character in a talking-animal cartoon, the protagonist who’s insecure and has lessons about stick-togetherness to learn, specifically the value of being part of a wolf pack. Yawn, sigh, doze until your head nods and then suddenly jerks back and jolts you awake.

Gracie wrestles with a bad case of zoo ennui – “Nothing’s gonna happen. It never does. We live in a zoo!” she laments. FAMOUS LAST WORDS. First, a truck arrives to deposit something huge and dangerous in a neighboring exhibit. Namely, a mountain lion named Dan (David Harbour), who grew up in the wild and is wild and only ever wants to be wild, thus establishing him as Gracie’s frenemy. Notably not her antagonist, because that’s the meteorite and what it does to the other animals in the zoo. And those zombified ooze-oozing creepy creatures seem bent on making all living things undead, an evolutionary determination that leaves me a bit confused, although I may be overreaching for thematic fodder in a cheapish cartoon.

Of course, as Gracie and Dan find themselves in dangerous situations demanding they find common ground in order to survive and possibly solve the zombie-zoo crisis, there’s a ragtag collection of oddball animals who remain unconverted, hole up in the gift shop and squabble about what they should do to avoid being turned into slobbering, overly aggressive mutants. Xavier (Pierre Simpson) is a lemur who happens to be a cinephile and therefore explains the dynamics of movie cliches at every opportunity. Ash (Scott Thompson) is a snarky ostrich, Frida (Heather Loreto) is an ever-trendy capybara, Fred (Kyle Derek) is a big gorilla, Poot (Christina Nova) is a naive potbellied pig and Felix (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) is a – warning: pun incoming – snooty proboscis monkey who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Chaos reigns? Yeah sure why not.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: 28 Deers Later? Otherwise, Zoopocalypse is a sub-Madagascar bit of bland kiddie entertainment, about on par with Hitpig!, but less annoying.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: If the name “Poot” doesn’t tell you this already, the dippy pig is the comic relief around here, and Nova seems to relish the role with a goofy vocal performance.

Memorable Dialogue: I interpreted this as Poot commenting on the dodgy character design: “You’re a wolf? I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to you.”

Sex and Skin: Nope.

Our Take: Night of the Zoopocalypse plays out like a Fisher Price See ‘n Say toy: The ostrich says, “Apparently act three is coming and we’re in a… what?” And the lemur says, “A TRAGEDY!” And so the movie deploys meta-commentary to theoretically amuse the adults in the audience (note: it doesn’t really amuse us) and teach the kiddos the mechanics of cinematic storytelling (note: they probably won’t get it, or care). Cute, sure, but I’ve learned over many years of studying storytelling in many forms that the fourth wall should only be touched sparingly lest we cease being amused, and this movie pokes it with enough regularity to wear a hole in it, thus allowing access to our ribs, which have been nudged so often in the last decade or two that the bruising will never heal, especially if you’re one of those people who compulsively watches The Office over and over again. 

I liked the jokes about how animals, despite their anthropomorphism, don’t know how to lift a latch to open a door, and there’s a bit where the lemur huffs on a gas mask like Dennis Hopper. Otherwise, Zoopocalypse is loud and silly, the voice actors mistaking goofy voices for characterization (the threadbare screenplay doesn’t assist in this matter) and the visuals are garish and rubbery without ever being particularly memorable. Contrary to the chatterbox dialogue of other animations of this ilk, the dialogue is mostly kept to a minimum, opening the door for a visually driven narrative, but the chases and sanded-down jump scares – the movie doesn’t really want to freak out its grade-school-age target audience – are never particularly memorable. The movie tries really hard, too hard, to be zany and entertaining, and you can see the seams of its intent. It’s passable if you’re seven, give or take a couple of years, but is otherwise rough sledding. 

Our Call: Oh, and there’s not nearly enough monkeys. It’s little more than a desperation pick for parents, babysitters and misc. legal and temporary guardians to distract the young’uns for 90 minutes. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.