13 Nights of Shocktober: Night of the Zoopocalypse

by A.J.

Night 12: Family Night

“You have not been paying attention to the lessons of the late night movie.”

Night of the Zoopocalypse

It is hard for parents to find something to watch with their kids, especially small or easily scared kids, around Halloween. There are some well known titles of course (The Addams Family, Hotel Translyvania, Hocus Pocus among others), but it is easy, at least for grown ups, to burn out on watching the same thing again and again. Kids want to feel like they’ve watched something scary but without actually being scared, at least not too much. It is a difficult balance. The animated movie Night of the Zoopocalypse went under the radar when it was released in 2025, perhaps because of marketing, perhaps because it is a fairly strange movie, skirting the line of a horror themed family movie and a horror movie that happens to be a kids movie. 

One night after the Colepepper Zoo closes and the humans have left for the night a tiny glowing pink meteor crashes into the barnyard section only to be eaten by a very cute but curious bunny. It undergoes a transformation and becomes Bunny-Zero. Any other animals it bites turn into zombie mutant versions of themselves. It is up to a small group of uninfected animals, but mainly Gracie the wolf, to figure out a way to stop Bunny Zero and cure the infected animals. 

After Gracie, the other central character is Dan, a mountain lion who was recently captured and brought to the zoo. The other animals don’t trust him because he is an actual wild animal. His main concern is getting back to the wild, not helping the zoo animals, but Gracie overcomes her suspicions of Dan and ends up saving him a few times. Gracie is clever and resilient and determined. Dan is strong and helps her a lot but there’s no question that Gracie is the hero. The other animals in their “pack” are a capybara, an ostrich, a gorilla, an obnoxious proboscis monkey, and an adorable pygmy hippo named Poot. My favorite character is Xavier, the French Canadian lemur who fakes being sick so he can stay up late watching movies on the TV in the infirmary. He’s seen so many that he quickly realizes they are in a “late night movie” and calls out the basic structure of how things will play out (This feels like…act two! …That means it will get even stranger. The heroes will be betrayed!”). Xavier is lively comic relief, but more importantly he serves as a sort of guide for younger viewers, explaining more or less what to expect next. 

Somewhat surprisingly the animal characters behave pretty much like characters in a grown up horror movie. The heroes are indeed betrayed by one of the more selfish animals. Others are too cowardly to help Gracie with her plan to stop Bunny Zero. Gracie struggles hard to keep everyone together. Also, like in a grown up horror movie, the supporting characters get infected one by one. Xavier names the infected animals “gum-beasts,” which is a pretty good description because they are not exactly zombies (they are alive) and they take on a colorful glowing gummy look. They can be dismembered and their body parts can move around on their own.  One scene that could be frightening or funny depending on your child’s sensibilities has the gorilla putting its body parts back together out of order. Gracie and Dan’s reaction tells us that it is strange but also amusing. The most surprising thing about the whole movie was the subtle references to John Carpenter’s The Thing. Not only is this a movie about an alien life form that absorbs and imitates what it touches, but at one point one of the gum-beasts sprouts spider legs and crawls away. 

Night of the Zoopocalypse can sound pretty intense but directors Rodrigo Perez-Castro and Ricardo Curtis took the right steps to make this palatable to younger audiences. The bright color palette, exaggerated regular animal design, and soft, gummy textured design of the gum-beasts are visual reminders that this is all in the realm of make-believe. The key turn in the movie comes when Gracie realizes that being a gum-beast is reversible and her goal switches from survival to rescue; at this point the movie becomes less intense in tone if not set pieces (Bunny Zero turns very large and monstrous for the final showdown). There is a moment of despair when Gracie’s first plan doesn’t work, but she has a good memory and eventually figures out what needs to happen. I suppose Gracie is a “final girl” even though she is a wolf. She is observant, resourceful, determined, and her concern for others does not stop in the face of danger. The characters in The Thing would have had an easier time fighting their shape shifting alien monster if Gracie was with them.

Night of the Zoopocalypse is available to stream on Peacock, Prime Video, Tubi and The Roku Channel.