The Last Screening at Takapuna Beachside Cinemas

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Years ago, the Takapuna Beachside Cinemas were the crown jewel of Auckland’s North Shore. With its sweet popcorn aroma, café and and the comforting hum of projectors, it had been a haven for locals and tourists alike. Couples on first dates, families escaping the rain, retirees soaking up golden-age classics—everyone on the Shore had a memory inside those walls.

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But the memories stopped the day the world fell apart. The outbreak began like a whisper. No sirens, no warning. Just a few strange cases reported from a local government research facility nestled just off the Strand—a quiet government-backed lab developing an immune-boosting vaccine for a new viral strain. It was supposed to be New Zealand’s shield against an uncertain future.

 

Instead, the mutation came quickly. The vaccine, intended to save lives, turned human cells into something else—something that moved long after death, something hungry. The infected didn't die peacefully. They rose again, their minds gone, replaced by a singular, primal instinct: spread the virus.

 

From Devonport to Albany, the North Shore crumbled in weeks. Auckland followed soon after. Phones stopped ringing. Roads were littered with abandoned cars and worse. In those desperate early days, a small group of survivors took refuge in the Takapuna Beachside Cinemas. They turned popcorn machines into heat sources, stocked the snack bars with whatever canned food they could scavenge, and nailed wooden boards across the air conditioning units and barricaded the doors. From the projector room, they watched the streets through broken security feeds. Hope flickered like an old reel, always threatening to burn up.

 

For a time, it worked. But the dead came first in ones and twos, sniffing through the cinemas like lost dogs. Then by the dozen. By the hundred. They converged on the cinema, drawn by light, by movement, by life. The last survivors to escape swore they saw the dead sitting in the plush couch seats, watching the flickering images as if they still understood. As if the cinema screens had captured their souls.

 

Years passed, and the world after lockdown had changed. Nature reclaimed the cinema. Vines crept over the building’s facade. The once-bright movie posters faded into ghostly echoes, bleached and bloodstained. The marquee, long since rusted, still bore the half-fallen letters of the last film played: “28 Days”—a zombie horror- that now felt more prophecy than fiction.

 

Now, Takapuna Beachside Cinema is reopening. Those few who dare approach talk of scary scenes, a living dead in the cinema watching horror shows. The cinema sounds are mixed with the low moan of the permanent inhabitants. The brave—or the foolish—sometimes creep through its dark halls with flashlights and trembling hands. Most flee before reaching the main theatre. Of the brave who dare stay, only a few return. Those who stay long enough hear it: the steady click of a projector long out of reel. The groan of chairs shifting. The low, wet shuffle of something that shouldn't still be moving.

 

And sometimes, when the moonlight hits the glass just right, a figure can be seen behind the concession counter, its jaw slack, eyes lifeless, still reaching for a bag of popcorn that never dropped.

 

The last screening never ended.

The dead are still watching.

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June 19th-22nd, if you are brave or foolish enough. See the undead.