Movie Reviews

Based on Isaac Marion’s novel with the same title, Warm Bodies centers around a zombie named R (he doesn’t remember the rest of his name) who spends his days roaming around an airport with his fellow zombies. He communicates with his buddy M (Rob Corddry) through grunts and shrugs, sleeps in an airplane where he has scraped together a nice vinyl collection and occasionally heads for the city to feed on humans. Yes, this is a zombie movie but not one like you’ve seen before.

R does need brains like any other zombie and he walks kinda funky, but his thoughts (which we know through a voice-over) are witty and sharp and he actually feels quite a lot of emotions. That is why when he and his buddies attack a group of humans, he spares a girl named Julie (Teresa Palmer). He does however kill her boyfriend and while eating his brains, R gets to relive the guy’s memories and falls in love with Julie. R and Julie… get it? There’s even a balcony scene later on in the movie.

R takes Julie back with him to the airport and while she is at first afraid of him, she quickly develops feelings for him as well. But Julie’s trigger happy father (John Malkovich) isn’t exactly helping things along with him being the commander of the colony where Julie lives. I mean, there’s nothing he likes more than killing zombies. And then there is the little matter of R having to fess up to Julie that he killed her boyfriend.Could it be true love though?

Basically this is a romcom with zombies (a romcomzom if you will) and while the story sounds silly as hell, the dialogues are funny, the movie is nicely paced thanks to director Jonathan Levin (50/50) and Nicholas Hoult does a great job of portraying R. Oh, and it comes with a killer soundtrack that includes Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Guns N Roses, Feist,…