The palimpsest of Anna and the Apocalypse

As zombies become increasingly ubiquitous, one might ask the question posed by Edgar Wright in his 2006 film Shaun of the Dead : if a zombie outbreak were to occur in real life, would anyone even notice? John McPhail provides one answer to this question in his zombie high-school musical, Anna and the Apocalypse (2017), by parodying the morning of the zombie outbreak. Wrapped up in a musical number made possible by self-absorption and noise-canceling earbuds, the titular Anna blithely sings and dances her way to school (via a noteworthy cemetery), completely ignorant of the chaos around her, a biting satire of the tech-fueled isolation of modern teenagers. By mashing up high-school dramas, romantic comedies, movie musicals, and Christmas films with a zombie narrative, McPhail uses comedic parody to make the subgenre exciting and new once more. Taking a memorable sequence from Shaun of the Dead and expanding it into a feature-length film, Anna and the Apocalypse not only reinvents the stereotypical “zombie outbreak sequence” but also offers scathing cultural criticism about contemporary teen life and high-school communities.