Review: Anna and the Apocalypse is the zombie splatter musical you never knew you needed

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