Zombies are very hot right now. Just ask Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead. The success of The Walking Dead has led to a huge influx in the amount zombie-related fiction making its way to movie theaters, bookshelves and comic racks. Unfortunately, the majority of these zombie stories have me wishing that the copycats would leave the zombies to Kirkman. Thankfully, Warm Bodies does not fall into that category.
I loved Warm Bodies. It works on so many levels. It’s a great satire of both zombie fiction and modern society. It points out that we are already a bit zombie-like before any zombie plague hits, walking around heads down, staring into our iPhones, oblivious to the world around us. Warm Bodies is my favorite horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead and my favorite adaption of Romeo and Juliet since West Side Story. I never thought I would have to ever write that previous sentence, but I did.Thanks, Warm Bodies..
Most of the movie is narrated by R, the main zombie played by Nicholas Hoult. Yes, that’s the awkward kid from About A Boy. No, I don’t get how he grew up to be so good looking either. But he did, and he’s better looking dead than I am alive. Theresa Palmer seems to be channeling her inner Hayden Panettiere when she plays J. Hoult and Palmer have great chemistry, which is something, because unlike the marble-like vampires of Twilight, R is a rotting corpse.
Rob Corrdry wins in Warm Bodies. He’s M, another zombie, and the closest thing R has to a friend. Without a doubt, M has the best line in the movie, which I won’t spoil here.
When the first Twilight movie was released, before supernatural romance has its own shelf at your local Barnes and Noble (I’m not kidding. Look for it next time you’re there), I joked that I wanted to write a movie about a girl falling in love with a zombie. We laughed it off; a zombie isn’t something you’d expect a girl to fall for. Needless to say, that joke movie idea I had was nowhere near as good as what Warm Bodies turned out to be.
There will be obvious comparisons made to Twilight. Yes, they both fall into the supernatural romance genre and star guys that make girls giggle. But Warm Bodies is so much more than those surface comparisons. I’m guessing those Twilight similarities helped keep people away from Warm Bodies in the theater. It would have kept me away if I hadn’t frst seen the trailer. Warm Bodies did nowhere near the business that the Twilight films did. If that’s not proof that there’s no justice in the world, I don’t know what is.