Synopsis:
A zombie apocalypse threatens the sleepy town of Little Haven – at Christmas – forcing Anna (Ella Hunt) and her friends to fight, slash and sing their way to survival, facing the undead in a desperate race to reach their loved ones. But they soon discover that no one is safe in this new world, and with civilization falling apart around them, the only people they can truly rely on are each other…
What We Thought:
Anna and the Apocalypse is the zombie musical Christmas movie you didn’t realize you needed! It’s a 100% completely absurd film yet it gets tons of originality points. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a zombie musical Christmas movie before.
I’m not a musical type of guy. I’m not of the generation that grew up on High School Musical. I’ve never seen a Pitch Perfect film. So a film being a musical really isn’t a strong selling point. But I watched the trailer for this and thought it could be something different and it is.
At its core it is a zombie film. A zombie apocalypse hits yet Anna is unaware. She walks down the street, bursts into song, meets up with her bestie who is also singing and then they realize the man in the snowman outfit is a zombie. They run to the bowling alley, meet up with more friends, meet up with the guy she hooked up with and realize they have to get to the school to find their families and possibly survive. It’s a pretty standard zombie story, but that’s the only thing standard about the film.
For a movie where characters break out into song, it has some tremendous gore. The filmmakers did not skimp on the blood and deaths. In fact, most of the movie has surprise death after surprise death with some great kills and horror gore. I have to give them props for having as much blood and death in a movie with singing. There is no lack of baseball bats to heads, candy canes through skulls and then some. The bowling alley scene can easily rival anything you’ve seen in a horror comedy before with a fine use of a ball return.
Then there’s the lead, Anna herself, Ella Hunt. I don’t know if I’ve seen her in anything before, but she’s just delightful. She looks good singing and dancing and also good dropping bodies. I hope this gets her more work because I quite enjoyed her in it.
Anna and the Apocalypse is really, really odd, but also really, really fun. There probably didn’t need to be singing in it but credit for originality. Sure not everyone sings well, but you can say that about most musicals. If you liked the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or really like Shaun and his friends killing zombies to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now in Shaun of the Dead then this is…
RECOMMENDED!
Director: John McPhail
Writers: Alan McDonald & Ryan McHenry
Producers: Naysun Alae-Carew, Nicholas Crum, Tracy Jarvis
Cast: Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming, Ben Wiggins, Sarah Swire, Christopher Leveaux, Marli Siu, Mark Benton & Paul Kaye
The Nerds Templar 