Likely to become a holiday classic -- thanks to its delightful and original combination of high school musical, zombie pic and Christmas movie --
ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE snuck into theaters in limited release at the end of last year (garnering some very nice reviews in the process) and is now available to stream via
Amazon Prime. The movie's a winner, a keeper, and an all-round wonder as it unfurls its very charming, funny and bizarre "take" on high school, love, friendship, Christmas pageants and zombies. Really, this is the best zombie movie since
Train to Busan and the best original musical in several years (for my money it beats the too-precious
La La Land all to heck).
As directed with a remarkably intuitive sense of tone and tenor by
John McPhail (at left) and co-written -- with not just exceptional "smarts" but also an appreciation of and love for the genres they send up and add to -- by
Alan McDonald and the late
Ryan McHenry (to whom the work is dedicated), this little film finds its footing so quickly and securely that I suspect film buffs will recall it fondly and lovingly when many other more trumpeted, high-budget movies will have long faded from memory.
The story is simple and initially rather sweet. As Anna and her loving dad drive along the highway discussing Anna's future (for which they each have a different plan), on the radio we hear, "The CDC has announced that what it initially thought to be a contagious--", at which point Anna switches the radio off, and we continue with high school and teenagers, the trauma of growing up, falling in love (of course with the wrong person), and putting on the yearly Christmas pageant. Talk about a pointed but relatively subtle manner in which to introduce the expectation of zombies -- and then having the chutzpah to simply leave them offscreen for quite some time!
By the time we do see them, Anna (
Ella Hunt, above center) and her friends are so immersed in teenage narcissism and song (a lovely, funny one, too) that they don't even notice the undead cavorting in their slow, zombie fashion behind them. (These zombies adhere to the better, slower
George Romero version, which allows for a lot more leeway, escape routes and fun.)
Anna's friends include her "bestie," John (a sweet
Malcolm Cumming (above, center), who clearly loves Ella in more than a best-friend way, and student investigative journalist Steph (no-nonsense
Sarah Swire, at left, below),
and especially the school bully, Nick (
Ben Wiggins, below), who turns out to have a bit more on the ball than bullies in other films. Wiggins also gets a great song midway along that reinforces how cleverly
Anna and the Apocalypse plays with the genre conventions of zombie movies, high-school rom-coms, Christmas movies and so much else.
The supporting cast is terrific, too, with
Paul Kay, below, left, as the succulently sleazy school headmaster, and
Mark Benton, below, right, the very picture of a kindly, loving, over-protective dad.
Who survives and who does not may surprise you, and this certainly adds to the film's thrills and sometimes to its sadness. (As one of the songs tells us, "
There's no such thing as a Hollywood ending.") I can't remember when a zombie movie made me laugh and touched me in the way this one does, yet even the moving moments don't seem too sentimental. They're all delivered with a wit and a style that seduce. (Who'd imagine a Christmas candy cane as a prime zombie-killing tool?)
Marli Siu (above) makes a sweet secondary love interest for the school's nerdy-but-nice photographer, a funny, on-the-mark
Christopher Leveaux (below, center left). The musical numbers range from very good to OK, with more of the former than the latter, and they are produced and executed so well that they seem utterly organic to the rest of the film. In a movie that mashes this many genres, that took
some doing.
Oh, yes, there's gore, too. This is a zombie film, after all. But even the blood is handled with the same kind of smart tone and subtlety as all else here. Boy, what a special little movie this is!
Streaming now via
Amazon Prime, and also available for rental or purchase on DVD and Blu-ray,
Anna and the Apocalypse is simply too good to miss. It'll take its place with other fine, dark Christmas movies, for folk who need a respite from the current feel-good holiday twaddle filling our network TV, cable and streaming services.
