Warm Bodies

(2013)
I checked out this film which just came out on DVD last Tuesday on the basis of a sole positive review; billed as the zombie Romeo and Juliet, there were many places this film could have gone wrong. Nicholas Hoult stars as a zombie who cant recall his name (he knows it starts with an R), and we are immediately plunged into the zombie apocalypsesmartly, from the zombies point of view. Rs voiceover complains about how boring it is being dead, how slow the zombies move he spends the first part of the movie explaining what life is like as a zombie, and its absurdly clever and impressively funny. One day when he and his buddy M (Rob Corddry) are with a pack of fellow zombies out hunting (Youd travel in a pack if everyone you met was trying to shoot you in the head, R tells us), they come across a group of well-armed humans foraging for medical supplies; the zombies make short work of them, but R decides to save one of them, Julie (Teresa Palmer) by smearing her with some of his own blood so she smells like a zombie. He takes her back with the pack to the airport where they live (an intentional stab at the eternal waiting in airports, and also how passengers are treated by airlines) and protects her; when she tries to run away, he has to save her, but eventually she must return to the walled human enclave. But something is happening to R; hes somehow becoming more human and less of a zombie from his close contact with Julie. Love, it seems, is curing the plague. If any of the above sounds silly, then its my failure in describing the film. I was immediately drawn in by the inventive dialogue and the turning of the zombie apocalypse on its head. Not since Zombieland has there been such a clever and creative take on the ZA, and Warm Bodies even manages to bring some fresh new ideas to zombie lore: Bonies (as they are called) older zombies who have shriveled to near skeletons and are much more voracious than the more freshly-turned living dead. The zombies also gain the memories and feelings of the brains they devour (this may have been done elsewhere but it was new, and impressive, to me); it helps them retain a shred of humanity. By imbuing the zombies with a sliver of humanity at the start, theyre less soulless monsters than sad, longing creatures knowing the future ahead of them consists of nothing more than being reduced to a feral Bonie. Hoult is excellent here; he gets little chance to talk through much of the film, and, being the undead, very little opportunity to emote. But he makes the most of it (and the voiceover helps a great deal); we embrace him at once. Palmer is also note-perfect as Julie; strong, smart, capable, and yet still capable of wishing the world could be as it was pre-apocalypse; both she and R on some level reject this new world. Corddrys role is smaller, but hes very sharp as well; John Malkovich plays Julies dad, the leader of the humans, and thankfully hes a little more restrained than usual. Theres not a performance less than excellent in the whole film.

This is the best zombie movie since Juan of the Dead, which is high praise for me, and (so far) the best movie Ive seen all year. Smart, funny, clever, a little romantic, and, incongruously for a zombie film, warm in spots, Warm Bodies works on all cylinders and hits all the right notes (I ran out and bought a copy the next day after seeing it). I think it helps ones appreciation to have seen at least a few standard zombie films-- youll get more enjoyment out of the subversion of the genrebut its not strictly necessary. This is a film I urge everyone to see. In a cinemaplex full of sequels and Roman numerals (eschewed by Fast and Furious lest they intimidate their target audience), its a welcome breath of fresh air to see something new, inventive and, yes, even though they cribbed from Shakespeare a bit, original. Ive already spoiled too much, but see this movie soon before it can be spoiled for you any further. June 9, 2013