Movie Review: Anna and the Apocalypse (2019)

Anna and the Apocalypse (2019) directed by John McPhail

Anna (Ella Hunt) is in her final year of school before going off to university only...she wants to take a year to travel. Her dad is very vocal about how bad he thinks that idea is. Anna's best friend, John (Malcolm Cumming), is supportive of her dreams and is defensive of her against her ex-boyfriend Nick (Ben Wiggins). John is not supportive enough to tell Nick off or get in a fight, but they are just teenagers after all. Their other friends, Chris (Christopher Leveaux) and Lisa (Marli Siu) are happily paired off. Christmas is coming and other friend Steph (Sarah Swire) is bummed because her parents went to Mexico without her. The usual teen angst over relationships and what to do with one's life becomes more urgent when they wake up on December 23 to find a zombie apocalypse starting. A bunch of people are trapped at the school with a tyrannical teacher (Paul Kaye), the sort who really doesn't like teenagers and likes to spread his suffering to others. If all this wasn't enough fodder for comedy and drama and horror, the movie is a musical too. Happily, it's only the humans who sing and dance, not the zombies.

I loved the blend of ideas in the movie--a lot of creative possibilities open up. Anna works at the local bowling alley with the thankless task of handing out and taking back the shoes, enabling the film makers to use that location creatively. The bowling alley has a cheap ball pit (an inflatable pool with balls in it) that gets more mileage than you would think. The school has the typical locations--halls, cafeteria, and the theater for the Christmas talent show (which showcases what teenagers think is great talent).

The music and dancing were fine. The style is more pop tunes than Broadway musical. I liked the songs as I was watching but they weren't particularly memorable. The choreography (in which I include the fight scenes) was good. The villainous teacher was a little too over the top for me, he needed to be either more sympathetic or more over the top. He was just annoying. The zombie gore was fairly standard stuff. The story also plays out in typical zombie-movie fashion with characters being killed off one by one, some sacrificing themselves others being sacrificed.

Overall, I thought this was an enjoyable movie but not a must-see like Shaun of the Dead.

Mildly recommended.