Rating: **
Review Date: 7/13/26
Cast: Nanami Abe, Rio Kiyohara, Wakana Majima, Midori Nagatsuki,
Nonoka Ono
Kurumi Ebisuzawa (Nanami Abe) is an ordinary high school girl who joins the horticulture club for some reason. They have a rooftop garden at the school and the club members grow and prepare their own food. This becomes handy when the zombie apocalypse strikes, trapping Kurumi, three other girls, and the school nurse in the school while the rest of the student body roams around as flesh-hungry undead creeps. Kurumi is definitely the fighter of the group and constantly carries a deadly shovel with her for zombie encounters. Yuri (Wakana Majima) is the quiet and shy president of the club, while the overly childish Yuki (Midori Nagatsuki) suffers from cognitive dissociation and believes that nothing has happened and that her classmates are still alive. Miki (Rio Kiyohara) is also a fighter, but she's also a wildcard and an outsider who doesn't trust the other three. And of course, there's Megumi (Nonoka Ono), the school nurse, who tries her best to keep the girls alive while they wait for the National Guard to rescue them. Miraculously, water and electricity are still available, but their idyllic existence inevitably comes to an end when the school catches on fire and the zombies breach the girls' defenses.
The movie is based on a long-running manga of the same name, but I really wonder how much you can milk out of this premise. Nanami Abe is super cute as the athletic and aggressive Kurumi, and her twin ponytails are always in perfect form. The zombies themselves are mostly uninteresting and the film is almost entirely free of blood and gore. While that's disappointing, it's clear that the film's primary focus is on the interpersonal tension and drama of being trapped at school, not the actual zombie threat. However, there are a handful of surprisingly good stunts and zombie effects, and some of the chase scenes are quite horrifying. Combat is pretty weak and Kurumi's shovel rarely makes physical contact with the stuntmen, but she swings it with full conviction and is quite convincing. The CGI-laden climax has the zombies running around on fire, and while the fire and smoke effects don't look real, they do a respectable job of conveying the situation.
Like many zombie movies, this one is mainly a character study about how the girls attempt to deal with their trauma and the friends they've lost, while also struggling with the logistics of staying alive and sane as their supplies slowly run out. The acting is decent and the dramatic moments are effectively poignant, but the pacing tends to be sluggish and the film spends too much time focusing on the mundane. The production values aren't great, but the lighting is competent and definitely a step up from typical low budget horror fare. As far as "schoolgirls and zombies" films go, this is one of the better ones. That said, the bar is pretty low (I'm looking at you, "Stacy").