Night of the Zoopocalypse opens in theatres March 7.Elevation Pictures
- Night of the Zoopocalypse
- Directed by Rodrigo Perez-Castro and Ricardo Curtis
- Written by James Kee and Steven Hoban, based on a short story by Clive Barker
- Featuring the voices of Gabbi Kosmidis, David Harbour and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee
- Classification N/A; 92 minutes
- Opens in theatres March 7
There aren’t too many children’s cartoons that boast the imprimatur of an artist like Clive Barker, the mad genius best known for Hellraiser and Candyman. Yet the new animated film Night of the Zoopocalypse is unusual in a few different ways.
Loosely based on Barker’s short story Zoombies, the new Canada/France/Belgium co-production follows the denizens of a suburban zoo as they fight off an all-night zombie invasion. The group of survivors is led by a feisty young wolf named Gracie (Gabbi Kosmidis), who teams up with a grizzled (but not grizzly) mountain lion named Dan (David Harbour) after a meteor crashes nearby, the space rock containing some kind of mysterious space virus a la James Gunn’s Slither, Thom Eberhardt’s Night of the Comet or a raft of other highly inappropriate-for-kids horror flicks.
As Gracie and Dan outrun hordes of zombified bunnies and other malevolent critters – befriending unscathed animals along the way, including the cynical ostrich Ash (Scott Thompson) and the exceptionally annoying monkey Felix (Kim’s Convenience star Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) – the film treads an uneasy line between kid-friendly pratfalls, sub-Pixar one-liners and a rather startling atmosphere of undead dread.
While Barker’s beloved Hellraiser anti-hero Pinhead and his fellow pain-is-pleasure Cenobite demons don’t appear in Night of the Zoopocalypse, directors Rodrigo Perez-Castro and Ricardo Curtis make a bold decision to embrace and contort horror tropes instead of burying them, correctly believing that kids can and do enjoy thrills just as much as their parents. The filmmakers even lightly edge toward some exceptionally outré Barker-esque elements, including a goopy alien-virus cocoon that wouldn’t be out of place in Nightbreed or Lord of Illusions.
The film doesn’t nearly reach the heights of, say, Henry Selick’s similarly pitched The Nightmare Before Christmas – which had the added benefits of catchy songs and beautiful/painstaking stop-motion animation – but Zoopocalypse’s bid to revel in the kiddie-macabre space is admirable. It’s just a shame that for every moment of inventiveness – including a vibrant colour scheme and a kaiju-sized finale that might genuinely frighten children under the age of eight – the script falls prey to barely-there banter between Gracie and Dan and some creaky plot mechanics that needlessly pad the running time.
The voice-actors are mostly up to the task, especially Stranger Things star Harbour, who knows a thing or two about scaring kids straight. And I suppose that any movie that acts as a pint-sized gateway to Barker should be applauded. But maybe make sure that your household’s night-lights are properly charged for a few evenings afterward.
