Anna Shepherd is eager for school to finish so she can finally get out of her small town home in Scotland and travel the world: a plan she hasn't shared with her widowed father and of which he will most definitely not approve. She's also dealing with the fallout of a failed relationship with the local bad boy, the unrequited pining of her (male) best friend, the tedium of her part time job, and all the usual stuff that accompanies the Xmas season.
(Come to think of it, the Xmas setting - which is why I am reviewing it today - is a bit odd in the context of "what I will do when I finish school", given that UK school years end in June or July.)
Ahem. Anyway, all of this is to say that Anna has a lot on her mind, which is why (a) she has a tendency to break into song from time to time and (b) she is a trifle slow to notice the Zombie Apocalypse when it happens. Because yep, what we have here is a musical zombie comedy, though one where the humour is generally rather lower key than in say Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland.
I had a good time watching Anna and the Apocalypse. It could have done with a couple more songs, perhaps, but I enjoyed the ones it did have (especially "No Such Thing As a Hollywood Ending"), its wry tone and the well-judged balance it strikes between the horror and threat of the situation (and the necessary "bad things happening to decent people" that this means) and the fact that it is still a comedy. To my mind, this was something that Shaun of the Dead failed to execute well, leading to me finding that movie to be half a funny film and half a decent zombie movie, but somehow less than the sum of its part.
If you're at all a zombie fan, check this one out.
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