A Zombie Learns to Love in Charming Warm Bodies

B+

As humans, most of us want to feel something. Happiness, pain, anger, joy, sadness, depression, love. To feel is to be alive. R (an unusual, semi-conscious zombie played by Nicholas Hoult) doesn’t remember what it was like to be human or to be connected with someone or something.

How the society R inhabits regressed to a world filled with multitudes of inaudible zombies and a few functional humans (all of whom are apparently Americans hiding in a fortress run by John Malkovich), is unexplained. We don’t know how or why society crumbled the way it did, nor do we really need to.

Warm Bodies is not a post-apocalyptic zombie survival story. This becomes clear the moment R lays his eyes on the gorgeous, blond-haired Julie, Malkovich’s daughter (Teresa Palmer). Before she can be eaten by his fellow zombies, R takes the rambunctious beauty into hiding.

Julie doesn’t understand why he saved her life, and R, being an inarticulate corpse, can’t quite explain either. He communicates by using hand and facial gestures, occasionally building up enough energy to utter a word or two.

Over a series of days on R’s cluttered and broken airplane, the two fall unexpectedly in love. Their romantic affection is born through driving around in a red, beat-up BMW, dancing to ’80s rock, smiling without a worry in the world, and growing close through the limitless power of Bob Dylan. It’s a dystopic, clandestine love story made from the God’s above. Or, writer and director Jonathan Levine: the man behind the evocative and astutely observed 50/50.

And similar to 50/50, love is the catalyst of Warm Bodies. Even amid a war soon to be waged on the zombies by humans (a conflict that threatens the relationship between R and Julie), it’s feeling that propels this film.

Alas, it’s R’s sudden emotional enlightenment that sparks a revolution among zombies (chiefly his best friend played by Rob Corddry). What makes the unintelligible R particularly fascinating is his intelligence and humanity (which is displayed though his train-of-thought, witty narration present during the film).

Working from the critically acclaimed and publicly adored novel of the same title by Isaac Merion, Levine effectively constructs a thoughtful parable on the importance of communication.

While not a searing indictment, R does comment on how we currently communicate, or rather, do not. We’re a cold, distant, and isolated society no longer occupied by intimate human conversations, but preoccupied with social media – the next quick quip to retweet on Twitter, or the next ironically detached status on Facebook to like. R longs for interaction, and lives in a time and place where that’s not readily available.

But aside from being a micro-modern satire cleverly poking fun at our inability to be human, Warm Bodies is a charming romantic tale in the vein of Romeo & Juliet. Hoult and Palmer play off each other with such affection and endearment, it’s impossible not give in (despite how predictable and overly-sentimental it may be). Corddry also adds a healthy dose of comedy amid the random gory graphic blood. Collectively, Warm Bodies is an ingenious respite to the typical horror zombie fare churned out so often.

Who would’ve thought that a pulseless corpse could evince more emotion and exhibit more humanity than, say, humans themselves?