YMMV / Anna and the Apocalypse

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Has Nick always been a jerk to John, or did it only start recently due to his incorrect belief that John has a Friends with Benefits relationship with his ex-girlfriend?
• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• Complete Monster: Arthur Savage is, initially, just the strict headmaster of Little Haven's high school, and a consummate Control Freak who lets a glimpse of his true nature show when, during the Zombie Apocalypse, he callously "prioritizes" over an old woman with a heart condition. When Savage's desperate attempts to maintain authority over the survivors fails, Savage decides to allow the zombies in to slaughter all the survivors out of spite, gleefully locking his own students inside while promising to deliver whatever's left of Anna to her father whom Savage looks down upon, even attempting to murder both Anna and her father when they save his life from the ravenous zombies. Savage gleefully hopscotches over the line to demonstrate himself worse than any of the mindless zombies ravaging Little Haven, attesting during "Give Them a Show" that he "might as well have some fun" with the collapse of society.
• Crossing the Line Twice:
  • Anna decapitating a zombie? Horrifying. John's high-pitched scream in response? Hilarious.
  • The sight of John as a zombie? Horrible. His novelty sweater lighting up one more time before the scene changes? Guiltily hilarious.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lisa and John are both frequently praised for their emotion-filled performances, humorous moments, good singing voices and Action Survivor statuses, even though Lisa is separated from the others for most of the movie and John is the first to die.
  • The two girls swatting at zombies with backpacks during "Turning my Life Around" are probably the most memorable of the uncredited background characters.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Plenty of fans adore the first two acts of the movie but take it pretty hard when the third act starts going into Dwindling Party territory and don't acknowledge those scenes.
• Friendly Fandoms: Anna and the Apocalypse and Spirited (2022) are a pair of fairly different Christmas musicals that nonetheless share some of the same fans for both, having catchy soundtracks, unique and quirky set-ups, Bittersweet Endings and atmospheres, and being greatly under-appreciated in the eyes of their admirers.
• He's Just Hiding: In a sense, there aren't that many zombie movies out there that leave the audience hoping for a cure as much as this one, given the final status of John, Tony, Lisa and Chris, zombified rather than put down.
• Hilarious in Hindsight/Harsher in Hindsight: When John and Chris are debating what celebrities may have been turned into zombies, John insists that Robert Downey Jr. will be fine, affirming it by saying "Iron Man Lives", when Tony Stark would die in the final battle of Avengers: Endgame.
• Idiot Ball: Arguably, most of the character deaths are caused by Anna, Steph and Nick's actions and choices examples include Nick's idea to go through the Christmas Tree Emporium results in not only his friends dying but also John, Lisa and Chris die due to Steph not being cautious enough, Tony dies due to a combination of him and Anna not realizing she had a longer reaching weapon in her hands to stop Savage, also she should have knocked him out when reaching the stage in the first place.
• Jerkass Woobie: Nick is a bit of a prick, but over the course of the film, he loses his friends and has to kill his father (whose parting words aren't exactly comforting), so it’s easy to feel sorry for him.
• Moe: Between her Digging Yourself Deeper moment while discussing Anna and Nick's breakup, her Sickeningly Sweethearts moments with Chris, and her vulnerable scenes while holed up in the school (particularly during the Human Voice musical number), Lisa is a pretty huggable character.
  • John, given his love for Christmas, goofy enthusiasm, girlish scream, and sad but mature reaction to Anna not returning his feelings for her.
• Moral Event Horizon: Savage crosses this line when he lets zombies into the school to devour the survivors inside, just to keep his control over the school.
• One-Scene Wonder: Quite a few uncredited characters from Hollywood Ending (which is very much a Crowd Song) and Turning My Life around (such as the two girls who spend a while trying to alert Anna while beating at zombies with their backpacks).
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: For the first half of the movie, Nick seems like a boring one-dimensional, meat-headed ex-boyfriend archetype with no charisma. Then the "Soldier at War" number comes along....
• Retroactive Recognition: Thoros of Myr left the Seven Kingdoms to become the headmaster at Anna's school.
  • Nick's next fling he ended up betraying the trust of? Yennerfer of Vengerberg.
• Signature Song: "Hollywood Ending" is arguably the most popular song on the soundtrack, which, considering the competition, is saying something.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • A horror-comedy filled with Made of Plasticine zombies getting killed in Bloody Hilarious ways with ridiculous novelty weapons, Headmaster Savage losing his mind and turning into a textbook psychopath... this is pretty much Dead Rising: The Musical. It even shares the fourth game's Christmas setting!
  • To Shaun of the Dead. But a musical!
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Christmas Means Nothing Without You" sounds more than a little like Mariah Carey's ubiquitous "All I Want for Christmas Is You".
• Theiss Titillation Theory: The dress Lisa wears for her performance looks dangerously close to suffering a Wardrobe Malfunction.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The two penguin students could have also provided some humor if they'd been among the survivors inside the school for a while, possibly even without removing the creepy scene of them in their costumes eating a body. which could have happened after Anna and the others arrived.

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