Anna and the Apocalypse

If you have been waiting some time for a horror-musical-teen-comedy-Christmas-movie, then it has to be said the wait is over. Anna and the Apocalypse boldly goes there. It centres on a group of teens who find themselves in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Why is there a zombie apocalypse? Not important. But it is a good excuse for some serious genre mash-up action. I am not necessarily a natural audience for this kind of thing but I would say you would need to be being a bit overly harsh not coming away from this one with some positive feelings. It is a very likable film with some ambition to do something new.

The star of the show here for me was certainly the very beautiful Ella Hunt, who plays the title character. Clearly a performer with some definite star quality and versatility and one for the future hopefully. The rest of the cast are good too it has to be said, and it was nice seeing old Dennis Pennis himself, Paul Kaye, appear as an unhinged headmaster. It has to be said that the comedy is a bit uneven to say the least, although there are some good jokes sprinkled throughout about evacuation selfies, Justin Bieber and all the rest of it but I found it only sporadically funny if I am honest. The horror side of the fence is covered with the usual zombie violence which is visceral and creative enough to keep us interested. The songs were actually quite a welcome injection, as it was with those that the film was at its most distinctive. And also, quite pleasingly, things are not rounded off with a Hollywood ending either, which I thought was the right way to go for this kind of thing.

On the whole, while this is definitely a bit hit and miss, I commend it for its ambition and fun-factor. When a film has the good grace to at least try something new, it deserves a chance and I wish it the very best.

What a massively disappointing conclusion. I have no idea how they could possibly mess up the second half this badly.

The film starts off perfectly, a perfect commitment to the cheese and the campiness, genuine talent put into the songs, an awful lot of great slapstick, and over the top performances.

And then they forgot what movie they were making. The film commits so much to its zombie film satire that it becomes an actual zombie film. It attempts to be sad, serious, dramatic. They start killing characters that have no reason to die because...?

I am so incredibly disappointed. I laughed so so hard for like 35 minutes and then nothing.

The best part of this film to me is it's ablity to not only combine two completely different genres (horror and musicals) seamlessly. It also shifts the seriousness of the film with out throwing the tone off at all. I also have to say the the songs and score fit perfectly in the film and are incredibly well done. It is some of the most fun I've had watching a film in a long time and hope to see more from these film Makers.

Pre-dating Disney's "Zombies" musical by a year, "Anna and the Apocalypse" is the decidedly un-family friendly R-rated teen angsty holiday zombie musical you didn't realize you needed. Set at Christmastime, the teens of a small Scottish village contend with both the undead and still having to go to high school. Our heroine, Anna, is having problems with her ex-boyfriend, while her platonic guy friend secretly pines for her, not to mention her dad, who's the school custodian is on her case about her wanting to take a gap year before starting college. Throw in a mean-girl competition over who will star in the school holiday pageant and this film is positively "High School Musical" meets George A. Romero (in a super fun way, that is). Ella Hunt is charming as Anna, as well as pretty badass, wielding a deadly prop oversized candy cane as a weapon. However, although Anna is an endearing protagonist, most of the supporting characters are mostly paper-thin high school movie archetypes and the teen drama elements are all pretty familiar. Overall, the film's mash-up premise and Hunt in the lead as Anna goes a long way to make "Anna and the Apocalypse" enjoyable escapist nonsense.

This is a solid 6 for me. It's an interesting concept which is not easy to pull off. And this is ultimately where it falls down. It's not a horror, comedy or musical but it tries to be. Not as smart as Shaun of the Dead.

The comparison with Shaun of the Dead does it no favours though. Shaun of the Dead is a masterpiece. This is not.

I enjoyed this though. It's entertaining. Could have been gorier though.