I enjoyed this zombie film, well more of a zombie/comedy/romance, as it’s a little different than the average flick. Warm Bodies is directed and written by Jonathan Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane [2006]), based on a novel by Isaac Marion and came to theaters in 2013 from Lionsgate. I’m glad it didn’t have the fast-moving zombies that a lot of the movies have today as it kept to a theme similar to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead [1960].
Corpses
The movie opens with many zombies aka “Corpses” roaming around aimlessly not knowing or remembering who they are and just grunting to each other. There’s a comical moment of how we as humans are shown as a version of the mindless undead. We see general Grigo (John Malkovich (Shadow of the Vampire [2000])) dispatching soldiers and his daughter Julie (Teresa Palmer (Lights Out [2016])) along with her boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco (Bad Meat [2011])) and friends for a mission to retrieve medical supplies in the city. but during the mission they encounter an attack from the zombie-corpses who can smell them. One corpse in particular sees Julie after eating Perry’s brains and he thinks fast and rescues her by taking her back to what he calls home, an abandoned airplane. Most of the actions are aided by his voiceover portion. Julie wakes up and realizes this undead is a little different and calls him R (Nicholas Hoult (The Menu [2022]). R tells Julie that it’s not safe out there, but she tries to escape anyway and realizes it really isn’t safe especially when the “boney” zombies appear who are the bad ones so goes back with him. The more time he spends with her he starts to feel different things that aren’t zombielike the main thing being he has a heart that starts beating which is odd for a zombie. His best friend M (Rob Corddry (Hell Baby [2013])) realizes he has a human is gets upset that he hasn’t eaten her. However, M realizes there’s a connection and helps them escape to where the other corpses are gathered, they all strangely let them go; see them holding hands and miraculously they all start to have heartbeats as well.
Nicholas Hoult and Rob Corddry
R admits to Julie that he killed her boyfriend, and she flees back to her home, the military compound. R follows her and Julie realizes that he’s changing and isn’t the zombie he was, which leads to another romantic bliss moment. She tries to explain it to her father and of course he does not listen; I mean honestly who would you buy that?
John Malkovich
In the meantime, the Boneys followed them and are readying for and all-out attack against the Corpses and Humans. Hence, the Corpses help the “humans” with killing the boneys and all seems to be all right in the end. But how will The General see it ?
Boney
I liked that this zombie movie was a comedy with romance built into it as it made the zombies look more humanlike almost to the point that they didn’t change all of the way, so they didn’t become the boneys. The music in the film is fantastic and really played along with the romance between R and Julie:
I like the way the dialogue worked as she defended him to her friend Nora (Lio Tipton (Viral [2016])) was really touching and convincing to the point that Nora was helping the two of them when Julie’s father just wanted to kill him. I highly recommend this film to anyone who likes zombie movies with a different flare.
Lio Tipton, Nicholas Hoult, and Teresa Palmer
TAGLINES:
- Cold body. Warm heart.
- He’s still dead but he’s getting warmer
- There’s nothing hotter than a girl with brains
- Dead sexy.
- Bros before brains
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588173/
IMDb Rating: 6.8/10
3C Rating: 7.0/10