Imagine a school trip with kindergartners and a fearless teacher. Now add a zombie invasion to the mix. When an army experiment goes wrong, zombies run loose, endangering the students and their chaperones. With this impending danger, Lupita Nyong’o, Josh Gad, and Alexander England must attempt to fight back against the flesh-eating corpses. That’s roughly the plot of Little Monsters.
Abe Forsythe’s dark comedy premiered at Sundance and South By Southwest this year. Although Little Monsters‘ premise may appear absurd, early reviews of the film praised Nyong’o’s performance. According to a review by Variety, Nyong’o put a lot of passion into the role and managed to fully inhabit the mindset of a teacher dealing with children during a chaotic situation. This marks Nyong’o’s second strong horror movie role in recent memory, following up her widely-acclaimed performance in Jordan Peele’s Us.
One of the main songs of the film soundtrack is Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.” Originally, the producers were not able to obtain the song’s rights at first, but Nyong’o had the opportunity to speak to Swift about the song’s importance and received permission to feature it in the film. So far Little Monsters has received a rating of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Little Monsters is scheduled to bow on November 15. Watch the trailer below.