Review: 'Night of the Zoopocalypse' is a weird animated blend of kiddie humor and creepy zombie animals

You rightly don’t expect a kid-targeted cartoon to carry a credit that says “inspired by a concept by Clive Barker,” which makes the animated “Night of the Zoopocalypse” an odd beast indeed — too creepy for younger viewers and too silly for a teen audience.

It’s closing time at the zoo, and Gracie (voiced by Gabbi Kosmidis), a wolf who thinks herself smarter than her pal, is prowling around alone. She finds the zoo’s latest acquisition, a mountain lion named Dan (voiced by “Stranger Things” star David Harbour), who’s recently been captured in the wild. The “you don’t like me and I don’t like you” dialogue practically writes itself — even if the script for this Canadian-Belgian-French co-production is credited to Steven Hoban and James Kee.

When Gracie sees a glowing magenta meteor land in the zoo, she gets curious. When she sees a cute rabbit from the petting zoo eat a glowing nugget, and turn into a zombie-like critter with glowing eyes and neon-colored fur, Gracie gets scared. When the demon bunny starts spreading its voraciousness — and its gummy-like texture — to other zoo animals, including her own wolfpack, Gracie realizes she needs help. 

Gracie and Dan make an uneasy truce, while a few other animals hide out in the gift shop and try to come together to fight back. They include: Felix (voiced by Park Sun-Hyung Lee), an untrustworthy baboon; Frida (voiced by Heather Loreto), a feisty capybara; Ash (voiced by “Kids in the Hall” alum Scott Thompson), a nervous ostrich; and Xavier (voiced by Pierre Simpson), a lemur whose love of old movies allows him to tell the others (and the audience) what happens next in a monster movie like this one.

Directors Rodrigo Perez-Castro and Ricardo Curtis deploy a colorful palette — particularly the moody purples and vile greens of the animals who are turned into possessed zombies — and keep things moving briskly.

Watching “Night of the Zoopocalypse” put me in mind of this year’s Oscar winner for animated feature, the Latvian film “Flow.” Both movies focused on a group of animals of different species who had to come together and learn to trust each other for their survival. “Flow” did it without the bargain-basement dialogue or cartoonish plotting used here, though — a lesson for all filmmakers who think audiences need every story beat telegraphed long before they happen. 

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‘Night of the Zoopocalypse’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 7, in theaters. Rated PG for action/peril and scary images throughout. Running time: 91 minutes.