Well tonight was another family movie night. This might be one of the bigger challenges of this whole thing. It mostly boils down to finding something I can watch with my kids that I’ve not seen. There’s plenty of great family films that are Halloween centric that are widely available this time of year. The only problem is I’ve pretty much seen everything worth watching. So now we’re having to pick through the leftovers and that’s not all that much. We’re closing in on the day where a good PG-13 spooky movie will be the desired outcome, but we haven’t crossed over to that point just yet. Scary movies that are legitimately composed of some real measures of fright equal bad dreams and I won’t make them sit through something I know they won’t like. Especially my 11 year old. I’m not trying to get him to grow up any faster than he needs to and he’s not itching for a lot of freedom beyond that MPAA ratings barrier. So I’ll take it and we’ll make do for now. There won’t be too many more 31 Days excursions where they’ll want to sit around with me on a Friday or Saturday night watching ghosts and ghouls so I’m happy to have the time with them while I’ve got it. And it that means we turn on something a little cheesy, then hand me the cheddar and let’s get into it.
This flick is one that I found from a list online. I went on the hunt for family friendly Halloween movies and after tearing through a handful of lists, I came across the Zoopocalypse. It looked decent. It’s animated, sure, but it’s not poorly done. The voice cast isn’t amazing. I think the only name of note is David Harbour and I wouldn’t consider him quite an A or maybe even B list celebrity. Maybe that’s unfair. At least the B level part. He might teeter on the edge at least. The other claim to fame on this one was that it was “from the mind of Clive Barker”. Now I will say that’s not necessarily a huge selling point for me. It’s not that I’ve never enjoyed a Barker film but he’s always been the man behind Pinhead most notably in my book and I would consider myself far from a fan of the Hellraiser series. I don’t even think I actually made it past the first one. But I do know that in the world of horror, he is of a certain pedigree. I didn’t assume the movie would be truly scary, it seemed far too bright and happy in general for the terror to really leap off the screen. I won’t say the story was tremendously original. It’s a zombie movie but in a zoo and only with animals. That’s the breakdown. But it was fun and it came together in some interesting ways.
First thing I like about this movie is the animation is pretty solid. A lot of times you get out of the Pixar/Dreamworks/Illumination studios and the quality of what you’re working with suffers a lot. Many of the streaming services are happy to pad their kids catalog with titles that no one really ever wants to see. There’s a myriad of folks who are more than happy to rip off a well liked film from one of the bigger houses and pass it off as their own, given enough minor changes to pass the legal sniff test. As long as we can’t get sued then it’s not Kung Fu Panda, it’s “Panda Hero Fighter”, or something to that effect. So that low budget animation racket is very real and pumps out some truly heinous copycats. This was not the case. They made some very distinct decisions when it came to the animation style in many cases but it all worked well enough. It didn’t feel cheap or seem like it was a rushed job done poorly. That really gave the movie some firm footing to base a reasonable story upon. If the packaging is cheap, it’s hard to care about the story, especially in a movie like this. Kids might not be quite as discerning when it comes to an animated knock off. We’ve definitely seen a few in our heyday. But at the ages my boys are at now, it’s hard to justify something that’s visually not getting the job done. That didn’t ever feel like it was in question with this movie. And that got high marks from the get go.
Secondly, I will say that in 2025 we are maybe a little too accustomed to the star studded voice cast of many CGI kids movies. I’m not sure how much of the tab that ends up being but I think this movie really showed that you can pay unknown actors that can really put together some compelling voice acting and you don’t miss out by getting names you’re unfamiliar with. I will say that this is more of a me problem than it is for my kids. Most of the time, even when I know they’re familiar with an actor from something else, I really have to help make that connection for them. Every once in a while I’ll get a “Hey dad, this guy sounds like that guy from the movie with _______” and I’ll confirm that they’ve heard correctly and made the right connection. But many times, even when I’m quite deliberate to try and point out a voice actor for them, they don’t make that one to one on their own. “Ohhhhhh yeah! That is that guy!” So having a list of well known actors and actresses who cost a pretty penny to get in the recording booth isn’t nearly as important as I might think it is. I know it makes it more enjoyable for me, at least to a degree. Recognizing the names behind the characters is a lot of fun. But doing my standard dive in on IMDb for this movie showed me that most of the principle cast were people I did not know and couldn’t come up with on my own. Even David Harbour might have taken me a minute or two had I not known that he was in the movie. So in the end, the voices they got were great. They each embodied the character well. Some hit better than others and that was ok. Not everyone was perfectly cast. But I thought they did a great job putting together the talent for this movie.
The story, for me, was a little flat. It’s a standardish kind of zombie movie. The origination came from space, not unlike the original Night of the Living Dead. A small, pinkish meteor crashed into the barn of the zoo. Yes, this zoo has a barn. An inquisitive little bunny goes and interacts with said meteor and chaos ensues. Our merry band of survivors includes a smallish female wolf, a wild mountain lion (Harbour) who has been brought to the zoo, a lemur, an ostrich, a proboscis monkey, a capybara, and a pygmy hippo named Poot who does not seem to have any natural inclination towards the ability to fear anything. These survivors end up together attempting to stave off the titular Zoopocalypse or at least survive themselves. The interesting thing that takes place as other animals become “infected” and turn undead, is that the seem to be made of an almost jell-o like substance. They can fall apart into pieces once undead and be reassembled in any configuration it would seem. This plays for a few good laughs here and there but also some very interesting and creative interpretations for zombie animal hybrids who have simply put their parts all back together in a relatively formidable fashion. A few times we see our cast end up in some considerably tight spots with zombie zoo animals close behind.
I think this movie comes together pretty well. It’s not an instant classic by any stretch of the imagination. But I think this is one that you could sit through with your kids this time of year and not be bored to tears. The gags that bridge that gap between kid funny and parent funny aren’t quite as plentiful as they might be in a bigger studio’s Halloween entry. But there aren’t a lot of competing CG animated features that fall in the same category. The Hotel Transylvania franchise, Monster House, Paranorman, Coraline, and maybe Nightmare Before Christmas are probably the most prime examples I can think of off the top of my head. Several of these have been around for what you could measure in decades at this point as well. I do realize that no matter how hard I would love to cling to the nostalgia of my youth, the reality is that we all grow up. And while I enjoyed the idea of Halloween and all that came with it as a kid, a lot of it was really just the free candy. The memories I have of trick or treating are great but as a grown up, the draw of Halloween just hits different. So I do understand why there aren’t hundreds of prominent spooky flicks for kids. Honestly, I think if you go much beyond the 80’s you’d be hard pressed to find many at all. In recent decades we’ve still had some but not many. It seems to be that when the calendar finally ticks over from August into September, everyone gets out the pumpkins and the ghosts with their flannels and hoodies. By then, most schools are in session anymore and most people are getting hungry for the temperatures to cool and leaves to change. We have that fall kind of feeling for about two months. But that’s as long as we get with it. Even sitting here now I know that in a couple of weeks the world will be red and green. Skeletons and black cats will be on extreme clearance and Santa will be everywhere. It’s funny how much people complain about that more and more. “We can’t skip Thanksgiving!” We’ve had ghosts and witches out for almost two full months and from November 1st until Christmas we switch over to that. What’s funny is that while Halloween really does get just about as much retail space, the hype is different. There’s plenty of consumerism for Halloween but the fanfare and the build up aren’t the same. I think this is evident in the movies. Not like we’re churning out dozens of new Christmas classics every year, but there still seems to be a far more commercial appeal of the Christmas movie for the whole family where the spooky movie for the whole family just doesn’t hit as hard.
This is what brings me back to my original point. Finding family friendly Halloween movies that I haven’t seen is a tall order. There’s plenty of horror movies that are getting churned out every year. Hollywood does seem to have a reasonable interest in producing higher budgets and mostly higher quality films these days. But horror movies are kind of like the back door that’s open to all when it comes to the cinematic world. Anybody with a weekend off, a camera, and a handful of friends willing to debase themselves on film can put together a low budget horror flick. And even that ends up being a bit of a lottery in and of itself. With Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity making the medium as accessible as it is for anyone to put together an instant classic, it draws a much larger crowd of interested parties. It’s far from being the benchmark of success. But with the likes of Tubi, Pluto, and a growing number of free to play streaming services, the content seems to always be welcome and I’m sure some films find an audience. Despite the saturated nature of the market, the need for family friendly scary movies seems to not be at the top of the list for many. So entries like Zoopocalypse are nice because it’s a relatively well made film that any audience can enjoy in the Halloween season.
If I’m judging this movie solely on it’s merits alone, I’ll give it a 5.5. That feels like a solid default to notate a movie is better than average but not quite tipping the scales into a genuinely good movie quite yet. Once you get over 6 in my book, we start talking about a potential spot on the shelf. Zoopocalpyse is entertaining and I’m glad we fired this one up tonight. It’s easily a one and done though. It served it’s purpose. We got through the night with a quality family film that fit the bill. I’ll take it. The mind of Clive Barker brought us a film that was equal parts spooky and goofy and it worked out well. So if this is what you’re looking for this Halloween, especially if you’ve got a younger crowd looking for something to fit the season, I will gladly endorse this one as an easy pick for that situation all day long. So until next time, I’ll catch you on the flip side.
