Cody Hamman delivers a late Christmas present: Film Appreciation for the 2017 zombie musical Anna and the Apocalypse.
Director John McPhail's zombie outbreak musical Anna and the Apocalypse is one of the very rare movies I felt compelled to write a Film Appreciation article about as soon as I finished watching it for the first time - which is ironic, given that my first viewing of the movie came after I had put off watching it for two whole years. I just wasn't sure how good a zombie outbreak musical could be. I didn't trust it. I figured something like that would have bad, campy comedy and probably even worse songs - and if it had singing zombies I would really tune out. But as the years passed, I kept seeing positive references to Anna and the Apocalypse, and the movie kept showing up on lists of "Best Christmas Horror Movies", since it is set in range of the holidays. So for Christmas 2020, I decided I would finally give Anna and the Apocalypse a chance and watch it with blog contributor Priscilla. As it turned out, all the positive references I had seen were right in line with our opinions. I loved the movie, and Priscilla said "That was awesome" as soon as the credits started rolling.
The credits on the film say it was written by Alan McDonald and Ryan McHenry, and it was actually based on a 2011 short film that was written and directed by McHenry, called Zombie Musical. Sadly, McHenry - best known for being the person behind the "Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal" internet craziness - didn't live to see this feature based on his short. He passed away about two and a half years before its first screening, losing a battle with cancer at the much too young age of 27. (And Ryan Gosling made a video of himself eating cereal in tribute to him.)
Set in the UK, Anna and the Apocalypse centers on a teenage girl named - of course - Anna, played by Ella Hunt. Anna is about to graduate, and her widower father Tony (Mark Benton) is not pleased to hear that she's planning to travel the world for a year instead of going right into university. Her best friend John (Malcolm Cumming) isn't so pleased about her plan, either, because he's harboring a crush on her. Other teenage characters we meet while following Anna and John through a day at school include school blog journalist Steph (Sarah Swire), video maker Chris (Christopher Leveaux), Chris's girlfriend Lisa (Marli Siu), and Anna's douchey ex Nick (Ben Wiggins). We also meet vice principal Arthur Savage (Paul Kaye), who's counting the days until he becomes the full-on principal and is clearly a jerk from the moment we meet him. Savage will only become worse as the film goes on, turning out to be the human villain of the story. George A. Romero always warned us that other humans are a bigger threat than the zombies.
Most of my worries about this movie were wiped out within the first twenty minutes, as the first two songs performed by the cast were far beyond what even my most positive expectations would have been. The songs "Break Away" and "Hollywood Ending" aren't just good songs within a musical, these are good songs, period. Remove them from the context of the film and these would still be something worth listening to on the radio, and the cast does an excellent job of performing them.
We hear about people falling ill in the area, and the zombie outbreak is out of hand by around the 30 minute mark - and this is when I was able to ditch the rest of my concerns, because there are no singing or dancing zombies to found here. These zombies are presented just as if this were any average zombie movie that follows the lead of Romero.
Since the outbreak hits on the night that a Christmas-themed stage show is being held at the school, several characters - including Tony, Lisa, and Savage - hide out in the school, while others who weren't at the school during the show - Anna, John, Steph, Chris - take shelter in the bowling alley Anna works at before planning to make their way across town to the school, where an Army escort is supposed to pick them up. Along the way, they find that Nick and his buddies have decided to kick ass instead of hiding and are smashing their way through the many zombies now walking the streets of their town. Nick's tune "Soldier at War" would not work outside of the film, but within the film it's a hell of a song.
The cut of the movie I watched also had a song that other cuts don't have. Apparently there are three versions of Anna and the Apocalypse out there; the US release is 93 minutes, the UK cut is 97 minutes, and there's also a director's cut or festival cut that's only available on the UK Blu-ray and runs 108 minutes. The 108 minute cut is the one I saw, and it's strange to hear that there are versions 11 and 15 minutes shorter, because I would not choose to cut that much time out of the movie. One thing missing from both shorter versions is "Which Side Are You On?", which is sung by Tony and Savage as they deal with the situation in the school. I think the song is a nice set-up for how bad Savage is going to be by the end, so I wouldn't want it removed.
There are other songs in the film that I loved - like "Turning My Life Around", "Human Voice", "I Will Believe"... and as the zombie action went on, I made a surprising emotional discovery. It seemed that the fact that this was a musical, and therefore we were hearing and watching characters express their innermost feelings through song and dance, made it even sadder when characters were killed. They were alive and vibrant, we knew their thoughts and feelings and cared about them, and then they were gone. And it was a bummer. But that's a good thing. It's nice when a film can make you feel the loss of its characters.
Anna and the Apocalypse is a great movie with some incredible songs. It became an instant favorite when I finally decided to watch it, and it's something I'm going to be returning to regularly in the future. I also hope to see a lot more of this cast in things other than this movie, because they're stars as far as I'm concerned.
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