Night of the Zoopocalypse (originally titled as Night of the Zoombies) is a 2024 animated comedy horror film directed by storyboard artists Ricardo Curtis and Rodrigo Perez-Castro (who also served as storyboard supervisors of the film), written by James Kee and producer Steven Hoban; inspired by a concept by Clive Barker, loosely based on his short story "ZOOmbies".
Premise[]
A meteor containing a mysterious space virus crashes into Colepepper Zoo turning the animals into vicious gummi-like zombie mutants. A young wolf named Gracie teams up with a gruff mountain lion named Dan to find a cure, while leading a rag-tag group of survivors to stop the leader of the zombies, Bunny Zero, from taking over the world.
Plot[]
In the Colepepper Zoo, Gracie, a young timber wolf, lives with her pack and her paranoid Gramma Abigail. Abigail prepares the pack and trains them for upcoming "disaster" and to never trust the other animals in the zoo, especially as a new animal is transported into a nearby enclosure as the zoo closes.
In space, a meteorite crashes into a satellite as a charged up piece of it crashed into the zoo through the wolf’s den and into the "Kuddle Korner" petting zoo, where a curious bunny eats it and gets infected with an alien virus, incubating it in a purple pod. Thanks to the damage done by the meteor, Gracie escapes her enclosure and investigates the pod in the barn, only for a gummi-like arm to emerge from it and attempt to grab her. She escapes, only to encounter Dan, a wild mountain lion and the new animal, and both are tranquilized by a zookeeper who put them in the vet station before leaving the zoo while the pod back in the barn, however, opens to reveal the bunny being turned into a "Gum-beast"; a grotesque, indestructible gummi-like mutant zombie able to survive even when dismembered. It then proceeds to infect the other animals by biting them as they leave the barn to infect almost every animal in the zoo aside from Gracie, Dan, and alongside four other animals like Xavier, a red ruffed lemur who constantly injures himself and fakes illness to be taken to the veterinary office to watch late night movies, Felix, a pompous, self-sufficient and arrogant proboscis monkey, Frida, a feisty capybara, and Ash, a sarcastic ostrich.
After almost being attacked by an infected gorilla that Felix left behind to save himself, the team splits up as Felix, Frida, Ash, and Xavier escape out the backroom and eventually make it to the gift shop to barricade themselves in while Gracie makes a deal with Dan to give him the zoo key to let him escape back into the wild if he escorts her to her pack and enclosure. After escaping more of the Gum-beasts, including the original infected rabbit, dubbed Bunny Zero, Gracie and Dan find the only remaining uninfected animal; a young pygmy hippo named Poot in a ball pit that Gracie has her join them by her promise of her and Dan eating Poot if they get hungry. However, upon making it to the wolf enclosure, Gracie is horrified to see her entire pack having been turned into Gum-beasts.
Now despondent, Gracie and Dan argue before the others accidentally power on the attractions from the gift shop and the duo are attacked by a horde of gum-beasts. In the ensuing battle and decapitating the infected gorilla in the cable car, Felix abandons the others to get the key in order to escape, leaving the door open to inadvertently allow an infected kangaroo and her joey inside to attack them as Gracie, Dan, and Poot come face to face with an amalgam gorilla-giraffe monster that has the key attached to its leg. In the fight, Dan is infected and attacks Gracie before they fall into the security office. There, in the ensuring chaos, Dan falls into a sink overflowing with soap and water and, to Gracie's surprise, appears to be cured by the soap. Wanting to save the zoo, Gracie and Dan butt heads again as Dan leaves with the key after being called a coward.
At the gift shop, Gracie and Poot rally Ash, Frida, and Xavier (who all survived the kangaroo attack) to cure the Gum-beasts while Felix steals the key from Dan, only to be swarmed by infected tree frogs and rescued by Dan (though, he only did so to get the key back). Felix tries to talk Dan into tagging along to the wild, causing Dan to have a change of heart and leave Felix with the key to save his friends, the latter attempting escape and just about able to, only to be swarmed and infected by the tree frogs. Gracie and the others manage to lure Bunny Zero and the Gum-beasts to an enclosure, using an infected elephant to topple a water tower and with Dan's help, fill an enclosure's moat to cure them all. However, it's revealed that all the Gum-beasts have instead combined into a large amalgamated monster, with Bunny Zero in control, and absorbs and infects the others.
With Dan and Gracie being the only ones left, the monster tries to escape the zoo and wreak havoc on the world before the infected Poot, having fallen off, activates a snow globe in the destroyed giftshop and turns back to normal. Gracie remembers the radio was on during the earlier confrontation and realizes that music is the cure for the virus and not soap and water as she thought before. Before they could act, Dan gets absorbed by the amalgam, leaving Gracie to force the clock tower in the middle of the zoo to 7 o'clock and initiate the song while Poot distracts the monster. Gracie succeeds just before she's attacked by the infected Felix and the released animals join in by singing as every animal, including Bunny Zero, are turned back to normal.
With reunions occurring and new friendships forged, Dan leaves the zoo and returns to the wild, but leaves the key for Gracie in case she decides to join him as she soon goes back to her pack and her new friends.