In the musical zombie comedy “Anna and the Apocalypse” (2017), the cliched themes of “High School Musical” meet the tropes of “The Walking Dead” in a blend that re-invigorates both genres for most of its run time. It collapses in on itself in the final act, unfortunately, because director John McPhail had created something fun and silly whereas screenwriter Alan McDonald (working from the late Ryan McHenry’s 2011 short film “Zombie Musical”) had written something darker.
The conflicting tones don’t reconcile as well as in another British zom-com, the masterful “Shaun of the Dead.” But on the other hand, “Shaun” didn’t have songs.
Zombie-stomping ensemble
“Anna” is more of an ensemble than the title suggests, but Ella Hunt is an appealing lead as the high school senior who disagrees with her dad about the importance of college. She cuts an iconic figure when wielding that oversized pointy candy cane.
“Anna and the Apocalypse” (2017)
Director: John McPhail
Writers: Alan McDonald, Ryan McHenry; with songs by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly
Stars: Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming, Marli Siu
Malcolm Cumming is Anna’s bestie John, who gets mistreated by the screenplay; and Sarah Swire’s Steph is abandoned by her parents at the holidays. Swire does better work as the film’s dance choreographer.
Marli Siu and Christopher Leveaux are the delightfully sweet-hearted breakouts as Lisa and Chris. She’s the type of gal who gleefully says “Boyfriend!” when Chris shows up, and he always sports a big grin around Lisa. Yet they are a theater geek and an A/V geek, undercutting the “annoying popular couple” cliché.
Rounding out the sextet of students is Ben Wiggins’ Nick, the bully who once dated-and-dumped Anna, and here we’re back in the cliché zone. But a more memorable villain comes in the form of Headmaster Savage, thanks to Paul Kaye hamming it up.
Strong songbook
“Anna” can absorb a lot of cliches if the songs and dances are great … and they are. The standout is Lisa performing a sexy double-entendre laden number in front of squirming families at the Christmas pageant. I don’t understand how control-freak Savage let this slip past him, but I’ll allow it.
The thesis-statement song contends that life isn’t like a Hollywood ending; appropriately, this is also the catchiest. It’s reprised at the end when “Anna” can’t come up with a climactic showstopper – the only glitch in the songbook by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly.
The most fun visual number is when Anna gets up on the right side of the bed and bops through the neighborhood singing about a hopeful future – but the zombie outbreak is happening behind her. The gag is lifted from “Shaun of the Dead,” but again, it’s fresh because this is a musical.
Jarring tonal choice
To be fair, “Anna” is peppered with reminders that it’s a zombie film, too. And zombie films generally don’t turn out well for the majority of the good guys. In the screenplay’s choices of who to kill off, it plays like a much-tightened “Walking Dead.” In that long-running series (overly long, by my taste), people we like bite the dust, but other people we like fill the void. And we’re always working toward an end point: a safe zone, a cure, etc.
“Anna” arrives at an end point that makes its fatalism simply play as fatalism, rather than the bad that must come before the good. Yet the songs remain mostly upbeat, and the action remains colorful. (By Brit-film standards anyway. We get a festively decorated school and neon bowling alley.)
The bad things that happen in “Anna” are slaps in the face, because we are cued to have fun. While it’s not a dumb film, it’s not as smartly subversive as it thinks. It leaves us feeling down, but not in a profound way – more in a sense of “Oh, they chose to go there, huh?”
I might sound like a studio head when saying this, but: Retooling the final act to have the “High School Musical” messages trump the zombie-fiction messages would’ve made “Anna and the Apocalypse” into an all-time holiday classic. The contrarian choice isn’t always the right choice.