Anna and the Apocalypse

I love when movies combine genres and ideas that perhaps no one thought were previously possible. Anna and the Apocalypse is one of the most unique films I have ever seen, and one of the most entertaining 90 minutes of all 2018. It's not for everyone, in fact, the Disney Channel esque musical numbers meeting the incredibly violent and gory zombie action will turn off many. But I found it to be an impeccably coherent flick, and one that's perfect for the holiday season. Not all the emotional ploys work and there are even some moments that I wish were re-arranged with different characters, but you have to applaud the boldness to this film. And hey, as the film tells us, there's no such thing as a Hollywood ending. 9.1/10

What a massively disappointing conclusion. I have no idea how they could possibly mess up the second half this badly. The film starts off perfectly, a perfect commitment to the cheese and the campiness, genuine talent put into the songs, an awful lot of great slapstick, and over the top performances. And then they forgot what movie they were making. The film commits so much to its zombie film satire that it becomes an actual zombie film. It attempts to be sad, serious, dramatic. They start killing characters that have no reason to die because...? I am so incredibly disappointed. I laughed so so hard for like 35 minutes and then nothing.

I'm sure the positive reviews are those comparing this to Shaun of the Dead (the sequence of the main characters oblivious to the zombie outbreak at the beginning seems to have been ripped directly from that movie), but SOTD this is not. That movie picked a direction, it was a comedy about a zombie outbreak. This film, however, tries to be everything to everyone and it fails as a result of being less than the sum of its parts. Is it a musical, a campy zombie movie, a serious zombie movie, or what? I get that having musical numbers in a horror film is original, that it is, but it just doesn't work. It's silly, not in a good way, because it's an attempt to add comedy into a horror film, which is a fine idea, but the movie itself is actually kind of serious, so the added musical numbers come off as tone deaf and completely took me out of the film. It also doesn't help that all of the characters are one-dimensional caricatures of actual people, and that the musical numbers are dull at best, laughably bad at worst. After about 30 minutes boredom ensued. I found myself watching the time left bar more than the movie itself. Pick a direction.

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