Anna and the Apocalypse
Directed by John McPhail
Written by Alan McDonald, Ryan McHenry
Starring Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming and Christopher Leveaux
Classification: 14A/92 minutes
School bells ring; are you listening? In the halls, brains are glistening. A ghastly sight, no one’s happy tonight – walking in a winter zombie land. Show tunes meet Shaun of the Dead in the delightfully gruesome Scottish horror-musical Anna and the Apocalypse.
Ella Hunt is Anna, a melodious high-schooler in a Scottish hamlet beset by hoards of living dead. Her best friend is a likable dweeb whose romantic love for her is unrequited. She lives with her working-class father and, wait a minute, isn’t this a Molly Ringwald movie? Let’s call it Pretty in Red and enjoy a tuneful gore fest that involves a group of angst-ridden teenagers attempting to slash, bash and sing their way to freedom.
Not sure there’s a message to this film – other than high school being a living hell, and all will be fine if you can just make it out alive – but come for the bowling-alley bloodshed and stay for the song, dance and candy-cane carnage.
Anna and the Apocalypse opens Dec. 7