With the popularity of films such as Zombieland, and multimedia franchises such as The Walking Dead, it’s no secret that zombies have become more popular in the media over the past couple of years.
It is also no secret that a certain, recently concluded million-dollar franchise, has proven the popularity of romances between humans and the various forces of darkness. Why not combine the two fads into one film?
The absurdity of the idea isn’t helped by the fact that Warm Bodies is produced by Summit Entertainment, the studio responsible for the Twilight films.
Then I got a look at the trailer, which seemed to do the trick of setting the film apart from Twilight by illustrating its light-hearted tone yet grittier story.
Nicholas Hoult stars as the zombie known only as R, who wanders the post-apocalyptic wasteland looking for food, i.e. people, and collecting memorabilia from the places he visits. One of the highlights of the zombie’s life is when he eats the brains of a human, experiencing that person’s memories and emotions as one would a drug high.
One day, after eating a young man’s brains, he falls in love with that man’s girlfriend, played by Teresa Palmer. This leads to a budding romance that may be the key to curing the zombie plague.
When summarized, the story sounds kind of dumb, but the film does a good job of executing the premise in a darkly comedic, almost genre-savvy manner.
It also has its fair share of drama during the second and third acts, but gets kind of cheesy with its “power of love” message. Mind you, it doesn’t go into Meyer or Wachowski territory, nor does it go full Romero with the tragic aspects of the story.
A lot of the high points can be attributed to Hoult’s performance, as he delivers the internal monologue with a combined sense of realism and comedic timing as well as delivering a good performance in his actions and facial expressions, as R isn’t a very dialogue-heavy role.
The other actors in the film do a pretty good job, but I didn’t really notice anything that stuck out.
The characters get a good dose of development without the plot grinding to a halt. While the aforementioned cheesiness does come into play during the third act, it’s not as bad as it could have been in terms of how the events of the story actually play out.
Warm Bodies was a lot better than I initially expected. It’s a little cheesy, but the comedic aspects make it more bearable.
It takes an idea that sounds ridiculous in summary and plays around with it in its own way that sets it apart from what we usually see in “monster romance” stories. On my personal scale, I give Warm Bodies a 4/5.
