USA TODAY International Edition
New front in war on Christmas
Holiday takes dark turn in zombie-filled ‘Anna’
Meet Anna, a new teen heroine who can carry a tune and a creature-crushing candy cane.
British actress Ella Hunt sings, dances and goes to town on the undead in “Anna and the Apocalypse” (in theaters Nov. 30 in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, expands to additional cities through December), a coming-of-age Christmas zombie comedy musical. It’ll appeal to anybody who enjoys John Hughes films, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” “High School Musical“and female-empowering character studies. (The new trailer for the movie mashup premieres exclusively at usatoday.com.)
Director John McPhail has lofty aspirations for his genre-busting holiday treat. “I want this to be this generation’s ‘Gremlins,’ that anti-Christmas movie you can’t wait to put on every year,” he says.
“Anna” is based on Scottish writer/director Ryan McHenry’s short film “Zombie Musical,” inspired by “High School Musical” and crafted as a school graduation project. McHenry was developing it as a feature when he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, and died in 2015 at 27. His vision was realized posthumously by his friends: Co-writer Alan McDonald finished the script, and producers Naysun Alae-Carew, Tracy Jarvis and Nicholas Crum recruited McPhail to direct.
The feature film centers on a Scottish girl (Hunt) and her small town of Little Haven at the holidays. The usual plans go awry when zombies start showing up, and Anna fights for survival alongside her schoolmates: best friend John (Malcolm Cumming), who harbors a puppy-dog crush on her; young lovebirds Lisa (Marli Siu) and Chris (Christopher Leveaux); aspiring journalist Steph (Sarah Swire, who also choreographed the musical numbers); and bad boy Army brat Nick (Ben Wiggins).
“It feels good, it’s fun, but the film does leave room for thought,” says Hunt, 20. “It is quite dark and people should come away thinking about the violent world we’re leaving for our kids.”
“Anna” moves from a “zany” teenmovie to horror comedy with monsters to something “a little more downbeat,” McPhail says. “When we get to the third act, people are going to care about these kids and want them to survive.”
The original songs lean contemporary rather than Broadway, from the poppy “Hollywood Ending” (which takes place in a school cafeteria and has dance moves a la “The Breakfast Club”) to “Soldier at War,” a throwback to 1980s-era power ballads.
The lyrics explain Anna’s shifting character arc: Her first song “Break Away” explores how her dad (Mark Benton) wants her to attend college, though she yearns to see the world, while Hunt says “I Will Believe” is a “super-bleak” song near the end in which Anna wonders “how did her life turn into this place where there’s seemingly no hope and yet somehow she has hope.”
Hunt has a musical background – she had a role in 2012’s big-screen “Les Miserables” – so swinging holiday decorations at zombies was more of a challenge than singing. “I can’t tell you how clumsy I am,” she confesses.
At first, Anna isn’t expected to be this suburban warrior. “She’s everything that a teenage girl is: She’s vulnerable and brave and scared and smart, and she’s allowed to be all of those things at the same time,” Hunt says. “I was so excited to see a young woman who doesn’t run off into the sunset with a guy at the end. That’s not Anna’s story, which is really refreshing.”