Anna and the Apocalypse: A Fresh Spin on the Horror Musical?
When it comes to teen-angst, coming-of-age comedy-dramas, I’m always ready and willing to be manipulated into a nostalgic mindset. I’m still a sucker for The Breakfast Club. I love Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. In the horror realm, Life After Beth and Night of the Living Deb give me all the feels.
So when I say Anna and the Apocalypse is bad, it doesn’t spring from any predisposed cynicism toward teenagers working through the crossroads of life. If anything, this should’ve kept me in its corner, even when it starts to decline early on.
While I’m disclaiming, I also have nothing against musicals. I’m as susceptible to a catchy pop ditty accompanied by show-stopping choreography as anyone with a pulse. And, again, the horror genre has proven ripe for cross-pollination with Broadway: if you haven’t seen a production of Evil Dead: The Musical, put it on your Bucket List.
The holiday season is a harder sell for me. I’m attuned to the cynicism of movies, music, and otherwise televised atrocities that have been committed in the name of crass consumerism. I love A Christmas Story and Die Hard (shaddap!) like the holiday-movie champions they are, but I suppose it’s telling that my go-to Christmas comfort film is the pitch-black comedy, Scrooged.
Quirk for Quirk’s Sake
In many ways, Anna and the Apocalypse is made worse because its conceit is so promising in the early going. I was genuinely smitten with the lunchroom song-and-dance number that gets things going, and the entendre-laden talent-show sequence implies some unique wit on the horizon. During those early scenes, I was thinking: “this could be great.”
Weird, then, how this Scottish production settles into a groove that could generously be called unambitious, before becoming just plain lazy – in the storytelling, characterization, and subsequent musical numbers. There’s a queasy drop-off in quality that has nothing to do with the comedic, gut-munching zombie outbreak.
A big problem is that a lot of Anna and the Apocalypse’s gags and dramatic moments hold no deeper meaning outside of what’s made explicit onscreen: the filmmakers assume a zombie snowman and Santa, along with an oversized decorative candy cane used as a bludgeon, are hilarious because…subversion of Christmas tropes, I guess? A light-up Christmas sweater is funny because…how cheesyis that, huh? It’s very Zombieland in the way it panders to lovers of quirk-for-quirk’s sake.
Warmed-Over Clichés
Additionally, much of the drama is warmed-over clichés and familiar scenarios with no fresh spin: Anna’s dad (Mark Benton) tries, but he’s struggling; Anna (Ella Hunt) wants to go far, far away because…because; her friends are singers and aspiring journalists, but little of this figures into the story at large. As things progress, it becomes clear that the songs are killing as much time as the unfulfilling character asides, hoping the sorta-catchy tunes will distract us from the fact that they’re doing nothing to give these people any extra dimension.
By the midpoint, I just wanted it to be over…but pressed on, holding out for a Christmas Miracle that would amount to something more than just empty nods to Wright, Romero, and Snyder.
At their best, musicals stir emotion – from jubilation to pain – with great emphasis. Last year, I saw a high-school production of The Addams Family that really resonated. But the characters in Anna and the Apocalypse are weak signifiers of high-school clichés instead of fully-realized people. Bits of history and backstory are parroted about awkwardly, expecting to fill in emotional gaps, to no success. Anna herself remains one-dimensional throughout, and what’s there exists on the base-level hope that viewers won’t notice.
The One Gift…
All that being said, if there’s one factor that makes Anna and the Apocalypse worth the sit, it’s Sarah Swire. She plays Steph, an aspiring journalist who happens to be a lesbian. The fact that the filmmakers use this as a bit of tokenism to score “woke” points is beside the point (she has a girlfriend who’s far, far away; otherwise, it’s another weak link to the already weak theme of alienation running throughout). There’s a soulful compassion that makes the character and performance the strongest and most fully-realized of the bunch. I had flashbacks to Scarlett Johansson in Ghost World and Alison Pill in Scott Pilgrim as I watched Swire steal the film from everyone around her.
To someone who actually gives a damn: I’ll gladly watch a Steph and the Apocalypse spin-off. Make it happen!
1.5 out of 5 stars
(Anna and the Apocalypse is currently streaming via Hulu and Amazon Prime.)
The Plot Sickens: Stay awake with Jonny Numb’s review of Doctor Sleep!
Crash Analysis Support Team
Jonny Numb
Jonny Numb (aka Jonathan Weidler) never learned how to swim, but can float just fine. He co-hosts The Last Knock podcast with Billy Crash, and can be found in the social-media sewers of Twitter and Letterboxd @JonnyNumb.
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