Not quite dead, but not lively enough
Anna and the Apocalypse Stars Ella Hunt and Malcolm Cumming. Directed by John McPhail. Opens Friday at YongeDundas, Eglinton Town Centre and Cineplex Winston Churchill. 97 minutes. 14A According to the Scottish Christmas zombie musical An
na and the Apocalypse, ground zero for the war on Christmas will take place in the waterfront burg of Little Haven. In actuality, second-time feature film director John McPhail shot this eager-to-please picture in Port Glasgow, south of Loch Lomond. The results take neither the high road nor the low road, settling instead for an oddly bland middle course.
I understand the impulse toward sneaky sincerity in a tale of graduating high-school misfits learning team-building skills and life lessons while facing an ever-growing army of undead Scots. But why not let the zombies sing? Why confine so much of the action to a bowling alley? And where are the jokes? Did the jokes get killed off in a prequel?
In brief: Instead of going off to “uni” (university), cool-but-relatable Anna (Ella Hunt, better than her material) crushes the hopes of her grieving widower school janitor dad (Mark Benton) by announcing her intentions to travel. First, though, a local problem arises, part of a global zombie pandemic glimpsed on the occasional TV screen.
Side characters include Anna’s rage-y ex (Ben Wiggins), whose personality conversion in the later scenes doesn’t merit the character’s survival, and Anna’s nice-guy pal (Malcolm Cumming), stuck in a rut of unrequited love.
Choreographer Sarah Swire also plays a transfer student, nice and deadpan with the throwaway lines. (She’s by far the most compelling screen presence.) Stuck with dull songs — he’s not alone — Paul Kaye oozes generic malevo- lence as the deputy headmaster hellbent on keeping the Christmas talent show rehearsals on track, despite the zombie problem.
“This isn’t Disney,” goes one phrase in the ensemble number “Hollywood Ending.”
Well, that’s partly true. Besides the obvious High School Musicalspoof origins, Anna and the Apocalypse lazes through set-ups and payoffs previously exploited in everything from The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964) to this year’s direct-tovideo Disney undead tuner Z-om-b-i-e-s.
Anna and the Apocalypse grew out of a 2010 short film, which features a few images of musically underscored chaos far wittier than the full-length film’s indistinct staging and framing. (The director of the short, Ryan McHenry, died before the feature came to pass.)
A stage version at the Edinburgh fringe festival, after a pint or two — that would be fun, I bet.