ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JOHN MCPHAIL / SCREENPLAY: ALAN MCDONALD, RYAN MCHENRY / STARRING: ELLA HUNT, MALCOLM CUMMING, SARAH SWIRE, PAUL KAYE / RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 2ND
The holiday season is fast approaching and everyone is getting their usual suspects lined up to watch. Well, you may have just found a new addition to your yearly list.
Anna (Hunt) and her friends are counting the days until they can leave school and start moving on with their lives, but they’ve still got to endure the rest of the school year with their new dictator-like headmaster, Savage (Kaye). First, though, they need to survive a zombie apocalypse that has spread over their sleepy town of Little Haven.
As with most of society these days, their initial concerns surround having no phone network and checking out the latest #EvacSelfies while waiting for the army to save them. When they realise that the army has suffered the same fate as everyone else, they know that they have to look after themselves. They need to survive the bowling alley (including a stag do with a taste for flesh) and a walk hidden under an inflatable ball pit before infiltrating the school to find their other friends and family. Meanwhile, Savage has gone full native and the power of becoming the head has gone to his own. All the while this is going on, they just can’t help breaking into song. Yes, this is a musical.
Sure, the songs are more of a High School Musical standard than, say, The Greatest Showman, but therein lies the charm. Of course, the teenagers are all suffering from their own issues with parents or plans for the future and these are played out in song.
The undead makeup is of the usual standard that you’d expect and this is a more than enjoyable romp, although there are some jarring changes between the mostly up-tempo songs and the dark realisation by the characters that life will never be the same as some loved ones don’t quite make it through the adventure. This is a pared back, low budget British movie and you can have great fun watching the teenagers trying to survive and also have a good time whilst doing it.
The extras for this belated Blu-ray release are a real bonus. In addition to the original DVD release extras, we are given the short that the movie is based on from 2011 called Zombie Musical by the late Ryan McHenry. We also get a fantastic and very heartfelt 84-minute making of documentary that shows how close the original developers were before Ryan’s untimely passing, and how close the actors became on the set, and both the cinema and extended cuts
A Christmas zombie comedy musical? What’s not to love? Add this to your stocking this year and enjoy a festive flick with a rotting difference.
