There have been plenty of horror musical over the years. Sweeny
Todd, The Horror Picture Show, The Phantom of the Opera, Phantom of the
Paradise, etc. etc., you can't even count them all. There are obscure gems like Shock Treatment and overrated crap like Repo! The
Genetic Opera. Maybe a horror musical was an ironic idea at one point, but that’s
long passed now. Horror and song go together like Jason Vorhees and naked camp counselors.
Anna and the Apocalypse is just one of dozens. It is a Scottish high school zombie musical set at Christmas
time.
Sorry I'm bringing Christmas into Halloween. It starts earlier every year, doesn't it?
I’m less surprised by a zombie musical concept and more surprised
nobody has done it before. At least, nobody has done it as a full feature film
before. There have been plenty of zombie musicals before on stage. The Evil Dead
and Re-Animator both have been adapted to the stage. Then there’s the "Thriller" music video, a timeless classic of these Halloween Times. In 2010, Ryan McHenry made
a short film called Zombie Musical which became the inspiration for this full
Anna and the Apocalypse. The feature film though is directed by John McPhail,
McHenry having sadly passed away two years before release.
With a zombie musical concept, one would expect something very
silly, very black humor, and very light. The Evil Dead musical played up the gore comedy so much it promised a “splash
zone” in its first three rows. However, Anna and the Musical is nothing like that. The songs are not rapid-fire jokes. Nobody is making bawdy jokes
throwing around spleens.
Anna and the Apocalypse doesn’t lack for comedy. The best
(and most expensive) scene of the movie features Anna (Ella Hunt) and her best friend
John (Malcolm Cumming) skipping happily to school singing “Turning My Life
Around” while the town falls to chaos. It is a big bright positive song happening
while Shaun of the Dead happens all around them. Around the rest of the movie, there is plenty of gore. These are pretty soft quishy zombies who fall apart easily. There’s a great gag when early on, when Anna accidentally decapitates a zombie and John screams like a girl. Later, Anna uses a big
candy cane prop to smash the undead all movie.
But also, Anna and the Apocalypse is not skipping out on the "Apocalypse" part. It is not making light of the fact that this is a dark scenario. These kids have lost everybody, and anybody could die at any moment. Even the high school drama is played straight. John is in the dreaded friendzone with Anna, who is more attracted
to a boy she hates, Nick (Ben Wiggins). Steph (Sarah Swire) is the one openly gay
kid in the cast and so is isolated. Two cast members get bitten and slow dance
in each other’s arms, facing death together. Anna and the Apocalypse is asking a lot out of a very young cast of performers, who do step up.
The one cast member who gets to go full camp is the
evil principal, Arthur Savage (Paul Kaye). Arthur is by far the oldest member of the cast
with a singing part. He brings some well-aged ham to the movie where is ham is badly needed. He gets a full villain song, “Nothing is Gonna Stop Me Now”,
cavorting in glee over the zombie conquest. I really like the rest of the cast
as singers, but Paul Kaye runs circles around them when it comes to gleeful camp. Nick also gets a villain-y song, "Soldier at War", but I
think the part was out of his actor’s range.
Anna and the Apocalypse is a pretty good musical. They’re
aware that their catchiest song is “Hollywood Ending” so they play it twice. That also is the song with the most clever lyrics. It is about a teenage ennui with life not being what they imagined. But the lyrics are vague enough: “We're tired of pretending, no
such thing as a Hollywood ending”. That could just be the flat cynicism on its face. Or it could be a more hopeful message: "We're tried of pretending [that there is] no such thing as a Hollywood ending". Anna and the Apocalypse though does not have a happy ending.
If I have an issue with the music, it's how straight they play it. The setlist is made up mostly of ballads, surprisingly few comedy songs. This is not a zombie parody of High School
Musical, it’s a High School Musical that just so happens to have zombies. At no
point do the undead to sing, even when by the end most of
the cast has been turned. I just wanted one corpse song, please.
Even if it wasn't entire what I personally wanted, this is a good movie. Anna and the Apocalypse is another underseen gem in our series. I had never even heard of this movie until a week ago and then
instantly had to put on here. Anna and the Apocalypse has a lot of heart, it is giving unknown young actors a shot, and it has a fun zombie fight in a
bowling alley. It is a solid combination of adolescent drama and George A.
Romero nightmares. If ever you thought Sing Street needed walking
corpses, Anna and the Apocalypse is your movie.
Next time we travel to 2018, the year of Meghan Markle living happily ever after with the Royal Family, Big Dick Nick doing the Philly Special on live TV, and our next movie, Revenge.
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