Zombies 3 Parent Guide

It’s senior year for Zed (Milo Manheim), Addison (Meg Donnelly), and the rest of their zombie, human, and werewolf friends at Seabrook High. Just as Zed is preparing for a potentially life-changing football game and Addison is organizing a national cheer competition, a mysterious spaceship lands in the middle of town, carrying a group of extraterrestrials looking for a new home.

I was a Disney Channel Original Movie type of tween, so I have to view this movie through that perspective. Adult me thinks this is the cringiest thing I’ve ever seen, but I’m mature enough to admit I probably would have liked it when I was a 13-year-old. The characters are mostly flat stereotypes being played by teens with minimal acting abilities, the story is silly and predictable, and the production values are cheap at best. Apparently, this is a musical, although there aren’t that many songs squeezed into the runtime. The music that makes it into the film is uniformly over produced, over autotuned, and indistinguishable from one number to the next.

Zombies 3 is high camp at its worst, and yet somehow also its best. I cringed my way through the runtime, but I can also appreciate that might have been the point. There’s no way the adults behind the cameras thought this was serious, right? Please tell me that’s the case. If this was made ironically, I can respect that, but if this was made in all earnestness, I have no hope for humanity. They got RuPaul to voice the sassy mothership, so the production team must have known what they were doing. You don’t hire the world’s most famous drag queen unless you’re diving into camp.

That said, there are some surprisingly deep messages along with all the ridiculousness. There are the obvious “go back to your home planet” comments until everyone learns to accept each other (repeating the pro-immigration message of Zombies 2). Characters learn that the way to overcome fear of people who are different from you is to get to know them. They also learn that disagreements can be helpful when handled properly, rather than glossing over them to avoid discord. And I appreciated the positive diversity throughout the film including a new character whose pronouns are they/them and has a crush on a boy and then a girl. (Parents with traditional views of sexuality may be less enthused about this subplot, but it definitely represents the reality kids see at school.)

On the one hand, I would rather stick pins in my eyes than watch this atrocity again, but on the other, I appreciate the positive messages and “so bad it’s good” vibe. I’d recommend parents skip this one, but with next to no negative content, I think tweens and teens will have a “monstrously” good time.