It’s the typical teen romance: boy meets girl, and while girl doesn’t immediately reciprocate, boy is falling hard, simultaneously struggling with the guilt of consuming the brains of said girl’s (now ex-) boyfriend and being a living corpse.
Let’s rewind-the film. “Warm Bodies,” released Feb. 1, is a paranormal zombie romance in a post-apocalyptic North America, where there remains a walled militaristic garrison of survivors in a world where nearly every other anthropoid is the brain-eating undead. An issue in this macabre food chain is a dwindling food supply and thus R (Nicolas Hoult, “About A Boy”) , whose wry inner dialogue narrates the film, must venture from the dilapidated airport he calls his home and go on the hunt with his fellow zombie buddies.
At the same time, Julie, (Theresa Palmer, I Am Number Four) is a survivor who goes on a medicine raid for the human enclave lead by her father, Colonel Grigio. The humans sneak through the abandoned city into a well-stocked medical clinic where they are attacked by (who else’s?) R’s zombie pack.
One by one, the humans are picked off, and the outcome seems dismal for Julie, when R, who until this point was snacking on the brain’s of Julie’s newly dead boyfriend, saves her life by passing her off as a zombie and brings her to his undead world.
R is no ordinary zombie; he still clings to his human self and has “almost-conservations” with his zombie friend, M. When he eats the brain of his victims, R feasts on the memories and emotions that make him feel alive again. Hoult’s portrayal of R is well done. Similarly, there were no terrible actors; Hoult deserves props for playing a difficult protagonist in such that he manages to endear the audience to R and stay in character, resisting the trend of poor acting prevalent in most romance films. Also praise-worthy is the soundtrack, filled with favorites such as Bruce Springstien, Bob Dylan and Guns n’ Roses.
But the most impressive part about “Warm Bodies” is the concept. While critics note that there was comparably little focus on humans in the movie, contemporary entertainment is abundant with the undead in various post-apocalyptic scenarios: “The Walking Dead”, “Zombieland”, “Urban Dead” and “Night of the Living Dead”, that never make tell of the zombie’s perspective, because there presumably wasn’t one.
Ironically, it is through R’s struggle as a zombie that we observe, without the overwrought sentimentality, what it means to be human. R’s heart stutters back to life upon seeing Julie. Consequently, other zombies remember or see nuances that reawaken them to their human selves, proving that redemption for all, including zombies, is possible. But it is R’s struggle to reconcile his passion for Julie and his new feelings of guilt that propel the plot to an exhilarating finish.
By: Olga Triantafilidis