Warm Bodies Review

A zombie apocalypse but with a twist: the zombies aren’t dead. Well, at least not really.

An undefined virus or plague has ravaged the world’s population and caused zombie-like creatures to take over large sections of the city, which is now divided by a berlin-like wall. In a barren airport, we meet R (played by Nicholas Hoult), an oddly introspective zombie who wants deeply to connect with people. He can’t remember his name, his parents, his job or even how he came to be a zombie, ‘although my hoodie would suggest I was unemployed,’ he says. Little quips such as these, and smart uses of wry humour make Warm Bodies enjoyable, even if the temperature is only lukewarm at best.

Directed by Jonathan Levine, Warm Bodies can be described as Twilight meets Edward Scissorhands meets the zombie apocalypse. What we end up with is a story about a girl, named Julie (played by Theresa Palmer), who falls in love with a zombie despite his eccentric tendency to eat brains. Slowly but surely, R regains his humanity thanks to the magical power of love. No, seriously.

It all starts when R spares Julie in a zombie raid on a human gathering party and takes her back to his home - an airplane cabin - to keep her safe. As daughter of the leader of the human survivors, Julie is strangely okay with being held under house arrest by a starry-eyed zombie. What makes this predicament even more baffling is that R is responsible for the death of Julie’s boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco) just moments earlier. But if Twilight has taught us anything, it is that love is complicated.

The Romeo and Juliet references are obvious, from the star-crossed lovers names to a rendition of the classic balcony scene.  It isn’t as painfully romantic as Twilight, nor is the coupling spot on, which is a shame given that the lead performances are decent. Nicholas Hoult is especially good at playing dead and his internal dialogue is wry and witty.

Warm Bodies’ biggest downfall is its weak zombie mythology and problematic definition of what a zombie really is, or lack thereof. The ‘rules’ of zombie lore are left at the doorstep and replaced with a watered-down premise that has been softened around the edges. The movie imagines a world where zombies can peacefully coexist with humans if they are accepted into society, at which point their hearts start beating again. The message, although ridiculous, wouldn’t be so reprehensible had they not introduced a super species of zombie called ‘bonies’, that are, for all intents and purposes, traditional flesh eating mindless zombies that have lost all traces of humanity and are irretrievably doomed to scour barren apocalyptic wastelands, hunting anything with a pulse.

So let me get this straight, zombies are curable unless you’re a super zombie in which case bad luck? That hardly seems fair.

Maybe they are saving a plot twist for a sequel where a teenage girl falls in love with a boney to discover that he was just misunderstood? After all, they are kind of handsome in their own, skeletal, flesh eating way…

Obviously Warm Bodies is not interested in zombie-lore. What it is interested in is a young romance that plays largely to a teen audience. As a rom-com with an indie sensibility and elements of old gothic romance, it succeeds better than most.