Mark Reviews Movies: ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | December 6, 2018

To its credit, Anna and the Apocalypse is a gimmicky comedy that at least has two jokes. The punch line to both of those jokes is the same, but you have to take what you can get in this arena of comedies that seem to be cobbled together from a couple of gimmicks and trends in the popular culture.

The first joke is that this is a Christmas story that turns into something else, and the second is that this is a musical that turns into something else. In both instances, the "something else" is a zombie story, as the holiday is ruined by a global viral pandemic that turns people into lumbering, munching monsters of the undead variety.

Similarly, some teenagers, singing about wanting to be free and the apparent hopelessness of finding true love, have to adjust their little high school musical outbursts to better fit the violence and direness situation. One kid, an army brat, belts out a tune about how, when it comes to killing zombies, he's the top of his class ("While you've been hiding, I've been kicking some ass," the rhyme finishes). Another tune has the kids pining for a human connection, while staring at some screens and standing within feet of each other.

Once the zombies appear, they pretty much take over everything—as such monsters are wont to do. It doesn't really matter that the story is set at Christmas or that it's occasionally interrupted by a few songs, because screenwriters Alan McDonald and Ryan McHenry have dug in their heels. It's zombies or bust for them, and we're basically watching a pretty generic version of such a story with festive decorations and songs that add a beat to the ensuing chaos.

The central character, of course, is Anna (a charming Ella Hunt), who's about to finish her final year of secondary school in a small town in Scotland. She wants to take at least a year off to travel before starting college, which doesn't sit right with her widower father Tony (Mark Benton), a janitor at Anna's school. Meanwhile, Anna's best friend John (Malcolm Cumming) continues to hold a massive crush on her, and Mr. Savage (Paul Kaye), the newly minted and morally oppressive headmaster, is preparing for the school's annual Christmas show.

That is about the extent of any plot here. There are a few more characters of note, including Steph (Sarah Swire), an American whose parents don't like that she's a lesbian, and Nick (Ben Wiggins), the army kid who briefly dated Anna and now treats her like the bully he is. There's also a hopelessly in-love couple, Lisa (Marli Siu, making the most of an inappropriate, innuendo-filled song at the Christmas show) and Chris (Christopher Leveaux), who interrupt the other students' lament about love to sing about how happy they are together.

In the morning after the big show, while Anna is heading to school and singing a peppy song about being "miles away," the town is overrun with zombies, killing and feeding on people while the unaware Anna and John make their way to sing a duet in the cemetery. Once the extent of the outbreak becomes clear, Anna, John, Steph, and Chris have to survive and make their way to friends and family members who are trapped in the school. Nick and his pals, now over-eager zombie-hunters, join the trek.

At this point, the characters and their various concerns don't matter much. It is a zombie apocalypse, after all, so we're left to watch them wander the streets and through darkened places (One is a warehouse filled with evergreen trees, just in case we forget that it's Christmas), occasionally sing and mostly attack or be attacked by zombies. The juxtaposition of music and zombie action is only utilized in that one number with Nick, and eventually, Savage, not the zombies, becomes the diabolical villain, trying to trap the friends in the school as revenge for ignoring his stringent rules (He gets a song, too, obviously).

Once we know the central gimmick, there really isn't much more for the movie to reveal or explore. For what it's worth, the songs, written by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly, are enjoyable, and director John McPhail stages them with gusto and a few clever bits, while the cast is game. After a while, though, the musical side of things starts to dwindle, and we're left the routine of zombie-bashing, major characters dying off one at a time, and a shift in tone toward a more serious approach that goes against the comical mash-up of genres.

The mash-up doesn't work, and that might be because they've made a musical that's disrupted by a zombie movie, instead of the other way around. For some reason, a zombie musical seems more amusing than a zombie movie that just happens to feature a handful of songs. That's a subjective view of things, of course, but even so, Anna and the Apocalypse is too hesitant to really become a subversive musical or a subversive zombie story. In wanting to be both and neither, it just becomes stale.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the Soundtrack

Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)

Buy the DVD