Warm Bodies

Hollywood has actually done a pretty good job converting the classic plays of Shakespeare over to more updated, modern styles.  For instance, 10 Things I Hate About You is pretty high on my "I enjoyed this" list, though that might also have to do with the fact that Julia Stiles is in it.  You have films like Forbidden Planet, My Own Private Idaho, O, The Lion King, all doing a really good job bringing his classic works into the modern day.  In fact, it's hard to think of any that were just simply a bad telling of his stori-oh wait.

...so, yeah, there is that.

Now, if any story has been done to death, it's Romeo and Juliet.  Two young people fall in love, their parents disapprove, and either love wins in the end or everybody dies.  If I just spoiled the plot, then shame on you.

So, how do you keep the story line interesting and fresh?  By taking the "Romeo dies" part and putting it at the beginning!

Here's my review of Warm Bodies.




In a dystopian future, one small part of a city has been walled off from the rest, containing the only batch of survivors from a plague that has swept across the world.  Those infected are no longer living, but instead lurch through the world feasting on those who do still live.  They still maintain independent thought, but are overwhelmed by their urge to eat and inability to control their own bodies.  They crave the brains, because (for reasons not really explained) if they eat a person's brain, it a) keeps the person from coming back and being like them, and b) lets the eater relive the victim's memories.

However, there's another race of "zombie" known as "bonies."  These are zombies that have lost all trace of their original humanity.  They have no routine to follow any more, they have no more conscious habits or thoughts other than to consume anything with a heartbeat.  They have also pulled off all of their own skin, leaving behind just blackened muscle and bones, hence their names.

One zombie, during an attack on a group of scavengers, spots a young woman and is immediately changed.  This might also have something to do with the fact the just ate the girl's boyfriend's brain, but there was an immediate connection before then, too, so try not to think too much about it.  He saves her from the zombie horde and hides her until such a time as he can get her back to her people while steadily remembering how to be human in the process.

There are small vestigial traces of humanity left in the zombies, however.  R enjoys sitting with his "best friend" M (see what they did there?), another zombie who they have half-conversations with consisting of grunts and growls.  A zombie guard at an airport waves a wand in front of everything that comes through the scanner, and a zombie janitor still mops the floor without any water or even looking down.

Nicholas Hoult plays R (that's all he can remember of his original name), and since most movies don't really focus on the zombie's perspective of what's happening, I don't really have any other performances to compare it to except that one episode of Fear Itself.  Nicholas Hoult does a good job showing us a character fully claimed by the disease that swept the world, and up until his encounter with Julie had accepted it.  He even admits to the fact that he also eats anything with a heartbeat, like the "bonies," but "at least he's conflicted about it."

Julie, played by Teresa Palmer, starts out as a pretty lukewarm character.  There's a moment when I realized that, based on what we know about her, she could have been played by any young looking brunette with a blond dye job willing to wear a gray tank top.  She's understandably frightened by zombies and is scared of R when he first takes her away, but it takes a while for us to really get a sense of her personality.  There's the basic "angry with her father" and "she and her boyfriend were having problems" but we don't learn much about her, what she enjoys doing and her personality, until later on.

A lot of the best parts of the film (downright scene stealers, I'd say), are done by the secondary cast.  You have Rob Cordroy as M, a zombie who seems confused by R's actions to protect Julie, but we spend more time watching him rediscover who he was.  Julie's best friend, Nora, played wonderfully by Analeigh Tipton, has some of the best scenes as well, such as when she actually comments on her choice of music during an attempt to disguise R while he's in a human settlement.  She also has a surprising amount of depth, as we learn that had there not been a zombie apocalypse, she wanted to be a nurse.  And then there's John Malkovich, who does a very surprisingly mellow job, underplaying the part to the point where it seemed just as unnerving as anything else he could do.

The story line is silly and really gives you the impression that if it's going to ignore its own plot holes, then you just shouldn't worry about it and get back to the fun.  There were only a couple of moments I was left going "wait, what?" and the rest of the time I was sitting back with a smile on my face.  It's goofy, harmless fun, the CG effects of the "bonies" are rather outdated, and there was one moment towards the end where "blood" becomes a rather important subject and I was left sputtering at the fact that "yes, blood is important, but you'd think the condition of the person who just had all that blood inside of him would be important, too."

The cast carries this film, though, and it makes no apologies for what it is.  Nicholas Hoult's voice-over is both quaint and funny at times, Julie does eventually grow on the viewer (though I don't really think the role was meant to be deep), but it's the appearances by the rest of the supporting cast that keep your enjoyment high.

And yes, I know, I've made it public to people I know that I hate the Twilight series and all of its rip-offs and homages, and zombie films have been done to figurative death...but somehow the combining of these two, when you have a cast this comfortable with the roles they're performing, it just works on a way that lets you watch the credits start to roll and go "hey...that was pretty fun."