Title: Warm Bodies
Director: Jonathan LevineReleased: 2013
Starring: Nicolas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Analeigh Tipton, Cory Hardrict, John Malkovich
Plot: Eight years after the zombie
apocalypse, R (Hoult) a zombie spends his days wandering around an airport with
his fellow zombies. Things however get complicated for R when he finds himself
mysteriously drawn to the survivor Julie (Palmer). Worse still these feelings
only get stronger when he eats her boyfriend’s brains, which in turn give him
his memories as well.
Review: Going into this film I had big expectations,
especially seeing how it was the first zombie romance I’d seen since “Zombie
Honeymoon”. A refreshing twist to a horror sub-genre which it’s safe to say has
become seriously overworked in recent years, with every low budget film maker
seemingly churning out their own zombie movie, so it helped that the plot of this one finally
sounded like it was bringing something new. Of course if you look a little
deeper you can also see that Levine perhaps less obviously here is also
attempting to rework “Romeo and Juliet” only with added zombies.
Opening after the apocalypse, humanity has now retreated to
a fortified enclave lead by Colonel Grigio (Malkovich), who bad news for R is
also Julie’s father. Meanwhile the zombies have taken over the surrounding
city, while also evolving into two distinct groups consisting of your
traditional shambling zombies and a new group called Boneys who are zombies who
have shed their flesh and in doing so turned into speedier skeleton versions of their former
undead selves.
Okay so this is pretty much nothing different than pretty
much any other zombie movie, but unlike those films R is also the narrator as
he frequently shares his thoughts on his situation and all in perfect English,
which I guess was kind of a given as otherwise we’d just get a bunch of unintelligent
grunts and groans. At the same time this also gives the first of its major
issues for R who is supposed to be your run of a mill zombie, for some reason
is capable opening doors, collecting objects for his airplane home and even
able to talk (outside of his internal monologue). Frustratingly no reason is
given for why he is able to do any of this especially when his character is
setup to be no different than any other zombie.
The other main issue I have the film is that the reason for
R suddenly developing feelings or why his fellow zombies also starting to
regain their humanity is never given. All we get are a bunch of highlighted
hearts beating and that seemingly we are expected to just except that these
events are happening. Perhaps Levine was hoping that we would seemingly be so
charmed by this unorthodox relationship that we would overlook such glaring
issues.
The relationship element of the film falls pretty flat, no
doubt due to that tricky line between being romantic and necrophilia. As such
it largely come off playing like an awkward friendship as the pair hide out in
R’s hideaway listening to records and playing cliché games after he rescues her
after her scavenger mission falls apart. Yes the fact that R ate her boyfriend’s
brains adds a slightly interesting angle though loses a lot of its power thanks
to some clumsy plotting, but again this would have worked just as well had the
film been about Julie making friends with R, as her finding out that her new
best friend also ate her boyfriend’s brain would have still made for a fun twist.
I guess selling a movie on the idea of a boy girl plutonic doesn’t sell tickets
in the eyes of the studio heads, I mean *Spoiler Alert* even “When Harry Met
Sally” ended up with them getting together *Spoiler End*. It’s a shame really
as both Hoult and Palmer have some limited chemistry together which is kind of stunted
due to one of them being a zombie, while the ending really is more of a middle
finger to the audience, while essentially the only way I guess that they could
get around that necrophilia issue.
While the main plot is frequently a source of frustration there
are still a number of fun moments scattered throughout the film, such as Julie
attempting to teach R to drive or Julie being told off by R for her zombie
impression being too much. R’s narration is also contains several fantastically
dry observations, which see him lamenting on his decomposing state yet treating
it the same way as an everyday problem. The ending also features some fun
action scenes, even if they are hampered slightly by Malkovich sleep walking
his way through the film when he eventually shows up, lacking any of his usual
presence.
Perhaps because I entered this film with such high hopes,
which is usually the riskiest way to watch anything and once again proves to be
the case here as the film fell pretty much flat for me, more so when the
zombies randomly regain their humanity, as while I could except R regaining
some form of humanity but its really pushing it for all of them to suddenly go
through this random and sudden transformation, much less when it’s given no
explanation. I guess we should be thankful that it was bloody vampires again!
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