Anna and the Apocalypse

This Scottish-High-School-Christmas-Zombie-Musical is a fun little entertainment – the story of a girl about to leave her small country town to see the world when one Christmas the zombie apocalypse threatens her friends and family, it combines gleeful songs and choreography with splatter and gore in a mix that is frequently joyously irresistible. If the fun starts to pall towards the end as the film attempts a more serious emotional resolution (and a key human villain ends up being somewhat overacted), and it possibly ends up slightly less than the sum of its parts, there’s still a lot of parts that put a smile on the face. Yes, having two of the characters blissfully celebrate the season while oblivious to the undead lurching in the background is gag not unlike one of “Shaun of the Dead”s most memorable sequences, but if you’re going to steal, steal from the best. And perhaps the songs are a mixed bag, with a few too many wannabe power ballads near the end. But there’s enough here to bring a reasonable amount of seasonal joy.