When I first decided to watch Anna and the Apocalypse, I wasn’t expecting much. I had no idea what it was about, besides Christmas and zombies, but that interesting blend was enough to pique my interest. About 10 minutes in, it became apparent that it was also a musical, and not only that, the songs were good. They were fun, but also deeply emotional. When the film ended, I was stunned by how much I loved it. I listened to the soundtrack on repeat, and couldn’t stop thinking about it. It took a couple of days for me to pin down why it wormed itself into my brain the way it did. Anna and the Apocalypse is about a sleepy town being overrun by zombies on Christmas Eve, but it’s also about adulthood and the tumultuous transition from teen to adult. The soundtrack (written by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly) especially fleshes out and explores this period of change that everyone goes through.
The main character, Anna Shepard (Ella Hunt), is an independent teenager about to graduate high school. Her friend John (Malcolm Cumming) lets it slip to her father that she isn’t planning on going to university straight out of high school, but instead wants to travel first. Her father isn’t happy about this, which causes a rift between Anna and her dad. Anna and the other characters have a musical number in the beginning of the film titled Break Away, in which Anna describes feeling trapped by expectations other people have of her, and wants to physically leave her hometown to escape these feelings of isolation, pressure, and monotony. Among the very real exploration of what it feels like to grow up, there are cheeky references to the subject matter of the film. In the first verse, Anna sings:
“As I wake half dead / in this same old bed / at the dawn of another day / I feel chained and bound to this hopeless town / and I know I must break away.”
The lyrics and meaning of the song strike me as extremely relatable, especially as someone who goes to school out of state for the same reason: feeling bored and disheartened with my hometown. This is a common theme among coming-of-age films, especially in fiction (Christine in Lady Bird, for example) but it is a trope grounded in reality. This film knows how to explore the theme without being too over the top about it.
The next song, Hollywood Ending, describes a feeling most teenagers of this generation experience: learning that life and love aren’t like what you are taught by the media, while also foreshadowing the film’s ending. The cast of students belt out:
“Cause no one ever tells you when you’re young / Love’s not like the books, the films, or the songs / We’ve been livin’ in a lie for far too long / And we’re tired of pretending / There’s no such thing as a Hollywood ending.”
Growing up means abandoning naivete, usually in order to protect yourself from being hurt. However, even this process is painful: the realization that you’ve been lied to, and that sometimes, life is just shitty. Throughout the film, characters are forced to confront that the world isn’t the idealized fantasy they grew up believing (while also having to bash zombies’ brains in).
Human Voice, my favorite song on the soundtrack, is especially unique. The characters explain how lonely and scared they feel. The song describes how the phone lines being down and having no reception keeps them from connecting with their friends and family, leading to a feeling of isolation and hopelessness. Feeling alienated from your peers, unable to connect with them is an incredibly isolating experience. I think the lyric:
“How can we escape the blur / Get back to the way we were / Breathe a little easier?”
sums this up really well. Growing up is losing people, saying goodbye to people, and wishing you could go back in time and relive the memories you have with them. Some of the characters that sing in this song are also in Break Away, they are idealizing a time where they were unhappy because of how much worse things have gotten.
The last song in the film is I Will Believe, sung by Anna. This song hammers home the themes of loss of innocence and losing hope in the world around you. After losing the majority of her friends, and her father, Anna stares at the sky as it starts to snow. She sings:
“As I look back over my yesterdays / I was so sure, certain I’d find my way / But now the world is such a different place / All of my dreams are gone without a trace.”
Anna was never especially naive, but she still had hopes and dreams, same as everyone else. At this moment, she feels like she’s lost those dreams due to circumstances completely out of her control. The song overall is pretty bleak, but one lyric stands out to me:
“But while there’s hope, while I still breathe / I will believe.”
Even among carnage and loss, Anna knows she has to keep moving forward, and steels herself for what is to come. She isn’t completely alone; her friends Steph (Sarah Swire) and Nick (Ben Wiggins) are with her. They aren’t sure what to do next, but know that whatever they do, they’ll be as ready as they can be. After all, that’s growing up: learning that no one really has a plan, and no one is sure of what they’re doing, and that’s okay.
In the film, the zombies are stand-ins for real-life causes of painful experiences that are part of growing up. Anna loses her friends and father without closure due to the apocalypse, which is the reality of growing up taken to the extreme. In the real world this could happen for a myriad of reasons: moving away, having different career paths, different life goals, slowly drawing away from your parents due to unresolved issues, the list goes on. Almost every character has something that they lose: John never gets to tell Anna that he’s in love with her, because he waits, and then is turned into a zombie. Anna’s friends, Lisa (Marli Siu) and Chris (Christopher Leveaux) are bitten by zombies and never get to have the life together that they dreamed of. The fact that it takes place during Christmas is also significant ― for those who celebrate it, Christmas can be a reminder of the excitement of waking up on Christmas morning as a child. Usually, Christmas splits a person’s life into two distinct parts: Christmases When Santa Was Real, and Christmases When Santa Wasn’t Real, transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Growing up means abandoning “silly” beliefs, which is what the characters are forced to do throughout the film, albeit in more serious (and deadly) terms.
Anna and the Apocalypse is a coming-of-age movie, a zombie movie, a musical and a Christmas movie all wrapped into one, and it somehow works really well. A lot of young people are anxious to grow up and go somewhere new, which causes them to become less aware of what is going on around them in the moment, and this film speaks to that. The characters are forced to live in the moment because their lives are in danger if they don’t. In Western society, Christmas is a time when it is expected that you appreciate the ones you love, and live in the moment, and this is compounded by the presence of zombies in the film. The message is clear: try not to live in the future too much, and make sure the ones you love know you love them. Oh, and always aim for the head when killing zombies-
