Film review - Warm Bodies

You’ve seen it before. The world is ravaged by a disease that turns people into the walking dead. The zombie is well and truly a pop culture phenomenon. ‘How to survive a zombie apocalypse’ is a popular topic of conversation and by now we’ve seen about every imaginable angle on it.

But Warm Bodies offers a creative new riff. The ‘zom-rom-com’—zombie romantic comedy. Take a zombie apocalypse, mix in some Romeo and Juliet, season with adolescent guy-wants-girl story and there you have it.

Warm Bodies is a heart-warming tale told by a zombie whose name begins with ‘R’—that’s all he remembers about his past. R, played by Nicholas Hoult, is a different kind of zombie. With effort, he grunts the odd word to his buddy, and he has made an aircraft cabin his home where he listens to old records (the film has a great soundtrack as a result).

While out looking for food, R and his zombie friends bump into a group of survivors collecting supplies. R experiences a delightfully awkward love-at-first-sight moment for a survivor named Julie, who is understandably distraught and confused that a zombie is saving her instead of eating her brains. R takes Julie back to his home to keep her safe, but mostly so that he can be with her. As he learns more about her, he also discovers more about himself—revealing hope for man- and zombie-kind.

With this premise, you’d be forgiven for expecting a wacky comedy. But what follows is a sincere and heartfelt ‘love conquers all’ story that subverts the zombie trope to deliver surprising lessons of hope and forgiveness.

DVD release on 14 August.
 
Review by Josh Wyatt

Warm Bodies
Genre: Comedy, drama
Director: Jonathan Levine
Rating: M (violence and horror)
Running time: 98mins