'Warm Bodies' Review

9/10

PG-13, 98 minutes, 2013

How ironic that a movie about the undead could bring so much life to a genre desperately in need of creativity and originality. Warm Bodies is one of the most surprisingly sweet romantic comedies made in the last decade, despite the presence of flesh-eating hordes, gun-toting teens, and John Malkovich. Made with a touch of indie-film flair, but with enough of the standard boy-meets-girl formula and zombie mayhem to appeal to the casual film-goer, this may be the most widely appealing zombie flick since Shaun of the Dead. Funny how both of said films are comedies. Maybe this is proof that zombie films should never be taken seriously. And yet, despite the humor and satire present, Bodies turns into what could be the most rewarding of zombie films on an emotional level, not just because of the Shakespearean romance, but because of the way the film calls us to reexamine our own lives, and what it means to be human.

R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie, and our semi-reliable narrator. After a zombie apocalypse, the world has been divided into three categories: surviving humans, brain-seeking zombies, and the dangerous "boneys," which are essentially walking black skeletons. R spends his days wandering around an airport overrun by his kind, trying to interact with other zombies and musing about who he was before the apocalypse happened. The film's humor sets in almost immediately, as we realize what these zombies represent: human beings who have lost their humanity, and are desperately searching for it, while the boneys are the ones who have given up hope entirely. The reason why the zombies eat brains is to feel a bit of the humanity they lost, if only for a moment (upon eating the brains, they see the memories of the brain-owner). R wants very badly to regain his old life, but this is hard when your body is decaying and conversations are limited to grunts. "Must have been a lot better before, when everyone could express themselves, communicate their feelings and just enjoy each other's company," R thinks to himself. This musing is immediately followed by a shot of the airport before the apocalypse, when everyone was still human, but plugged into their phones. You see the parallel, right? Yeah buddy, it was a lot better before.

But like all classic romances, a girl (Teresa Palmer) soon enters the picture. A human girl, no less. And suddenly, R is able to make more than one facial expression. He can now make his eyes widen like "whoa." The girl's name is Julie (that's right, R and Julie) and she and her friends are out retrieving medical supplies for Julie's father, who runs the human survival camp. The attraction is real, but many obstacles will have to be overcome to win her love, the first being that during the attack, he unknowingly killed her boyfriend and ate his brains. Darn. But once R rescues Julie from the hordes, he does his best not to kill her, or anyone else ever again. Soon, Julie begins to see something different about R. She recognizes the humanity he has deep down under all that rotting flesh and bone. Convincing her dad to allow such a relationship will be a challenge, especially since her dad is John Malkovich. Julie's bitter father has, in some ways, lost his humanity too, because he's allowed tragedy to harden his heart, and can no longer see the goodness in the world, let alone in zombies.

All this plays out like a star-crossed romance, but with a rom-com happy ending that works on both a comedy and romance level. If you're a cynic about love, you won't appreciate the way that love is used to make the zombies human again. But that's exactly why this is one of the most unexpectedly uplifting zombie movies of all time. Through the power of human affection, the zombies' blood starts pumping again, and they are able to rejoin society. Blessed Mother Teresa once said that "We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love." It's a simple message, but one that is often taken for granted and rarely shown on the screen in such a way that doesn't feel forced. In this way, Warm Bodies not only reinvigorates the romantic comedy, but also the age old message of love's healing power, a message that never really decays.