Warm Bodies

On paper, the plot of Warm Bodies couldn’t sound any more lame. A zombie falls in love with a non-zombie girl. It sounds exactly like the kind of Twilight rip-off that fills the shelves of the Barnes and Noble teen paranormal romance section. How cliché. But in actuality, the film delivers with a fresh story that pulls from “Romeo and Juliet” with tongue planted firmly in cheek. R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie who wanders endlessly through an abandoned airport in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. But one day when he travels out to feed, he comes across a girl (Teresa Palmer) that stops him in is tracks. He happens to have just eaten her boyfriend, Dave Franco’s, brains. So he spares her and takes her back to the airport as his guest.

The film balances comedy with real emotion to build characters and a story the audience really cares about. Where Twilight fails by taking itself too seriously, Warm Bodies laughs along with you. R references how slow zombies move, how his conversations consist of inaudible grunts and other attributes we’ve come to associate with zombie culture. Even the crazed militaristic resistance leader (John Malkovich) is there. But the most success comes with the comedy, which outweighs the dramatic tension throughout.

Palmer has a history of starring in highly anticipated films (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I am Number Four) that were meant to be made into franchises. But they don’t pan out. Warm Bodies has proven to be successful even though a sequel wouldn’t necessarily be easy. She and Hoult carry the film with two strong performances. This is the type of film that bridges the gender gap which made Twilight an almost exclusively female franchise. Okay, it’s probably more 60-40 in favor of being directed toward women. Oh and by the way, Warm Bodies has the first instance of a zombie telling us music sounds better on vinyl. Thanks for that. We’ve never heard such a concept before.

Each film earns either zero, a half or a full arrow in five categories. The categories are Acting, Writing/Directing, Emotion, Innovation and Overall Impression. The arrows are added up to equal the full score.