Anna and the Apocalypse

Anna Shepherd is a teenager in the small Scottish town of Little Haven who is eager to leave home and see the world, though her father has other plans for her after school. Her best friend John has a secret of his own: he is in love with her but cannot bring himself to say so. Their ordinary worries are overtaken when a zombie outbreak strikes the town at Christmas, and Anna and her classmates have to fight their way through the streets, and through the school, to find out whether the people they care about are still alive. The film mixes horror and comedy with musical numbers, sending its young cast up against festive decorations gone wrong.

John McPhail directed this British production, the first of his three features to date, from a screenplay by Ryan McHenry, Alan McDonald and Tommy Reilly. Ella Hunt plays Anna, with Sarah Swire, Malcolm Cumming, Christopher Leveaux, Paul Kaye and Ben Wiggins among the main cast, and 37 credited performers in all.

The film was released at the end of November 2018 and runs 97 minutes. It holds a rating of 6.1 out of 10 on IMDb from around 18,000 votes, and 6 out of 10 on TMDB from roughly 455 votes. A critics' rating of 6.7 out of 10 from 129 reviews puts it somewhat above the audience scores, suggesting a warmer response from reviewers than from the wider public.