Anna and the Apocalypse
Director: John McPhail
Release year: 2017
Staying festive, a Scottish zombie musical about a girl longing to escape a small town, the tricky relationships we navigate as teenagers, with peers, parents and teachers, and the power of musical theatre to kill the undead.
Anna has bought a flight to Australia in her gap year without telling her dad. Her friend John has a secret crush on her and, while he wants to go to art school, doesn’t want her to go so far away. Steph’s parents have left her alone for Christmas. The three band together with a handful of others to try to escape the hordes of zombies attacking their town.
The songs and choreography are decent, but I’m no musical aficionado, and that didn’t stop the gore from being intense when they use whatever they can get their hands on to crush undead heads. It’s heartfelt, and the youngsters suffer real hardship in the second half, so it becomes increasingly bleak. Ella Hunt should be in more films, she’s luminous here as Anna, and so is Paul Kaye as increasingly unhinged headteacher Arthur Savage.