Warm Bodies
Macabeo Eastman
Warm Bodies is a 2013 American paranormal romantic[5][6] zombie comedy film written and directed by Jonathan Levine and based on Isaac Marion's 2010 novel of the same name, which in turn is inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.[7] The film stars Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Lio Tipton,[a] Cory Hardrict, and John Malkovich.[7]
The film focuses on the development of the relationship between Julie (Palmer), a young woman, and R (Hoult), a zombie, and their eventual romance, causing R to slowly return to human form. The film is noted for displaying human characteristics in zombie characters and for being told from a zombie's perspective.[8][9]
About eight years after a zombie apocalypse, R, a zombie who cannot recall his name but believes it began with an "R", spends his days wandering around an airport which is now filled with his fellow undead, including M, who is his best friend. R and M achieve rudimentary communication with grunts and moans and occasional near-words. As a zombie, R does not have a heartbeat and constantly craves human flesh, especially brains, because he is able to "feel alive" through experiencing the victims' memories when he eats them.
While R and a pack of zombies are hunting for food, they encounter Julie Grigio and a group of her friends, who were sent by Julie's father from a walled-off human enclave to recover medical supplies. R sees Julie and is drawn to her; his heart beats for the first time. After being shot in the chest by Julie's boyfriend, Perry, R kills him and eats his brain while Julie is distracted. Perry's memories increase R's attraction to Julie. He rescues her from the rest of the pack by wiping some zombie blood on her face, masking her scent, and takes her to an airplane he resides in to keep her safe.
Julie is terrified of R and suspicious of his intentions. She starts trusting him after he rescues her during a failed escape attempt and finds food for her. R insists that Julie stay with him for a few days, until he deems it safe enough for her to leave. The two bond, listening to LP records and playing games to kill time, causing R to begin to come to life; his heart starts beating, and he is slowly able to communicate with more words.[10] After a few days, Julie gets restless, and tries to return home, yet attracts swarms of zombies. After fending off a group including M, who is confused by R's actions, R decides to return her to the human enclave.
R finds Julie and meets her friend Nora, who is shocked to see R in the territory and notices R's growing humanity. When R reveals that the other corpses are also coming back to life, the three of them attempt to tell Colonel Grigio, Julie's father and the leader of the survivors. Colonel Grigio dismisses them and threatens to kill R, stopping only when Nora pulls a gun on him. Julie and R escape to a baseball stadium where the rest of R's group is waiting but find themselves under attack by Boneys.
The studio Summit Entertainment backed the film,[11] which was produced by Bruna Papanadrea, David Hoberman, and Todd Lieberman and executive produced by Laurie Webb and Cori Shepherd Stern.[12] The zombies can barely talk in the film, so extensive voice-overs were used to express their thoughts.[13]
Writer and director Jonathan Levine said even though this is a love story that involves zombies, he hoped people would not try to put the film into one category and zombie enthusiasts would be open to a new twist on the genre. "I think this movie takes the mythology in a different direction, and I think there is a lot there for die-hard zombie fans," he explained. "We're encouraging people to be open-minded, because it does take some liberties with the mythology, but at the same time, it's very grounded in the science of zombie-ism and uses that as a springboard for a more fantastical story. It may be divisive, but I think there's a lot there for zombie fans if they're open-minded to a new take on it, and I hope they can."[14] Actress Teresa Palmer said, "For me, the core of the story is that love breathes life back into people. That human connection saves us. People who have had those lights dimmed inside them, when they fall in love they get brighter."[15]
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 81% rating, based on reviews from 209 critics, with an average score of 6.8/10. The site's consensus reads: "Warm Bodies offers a sweet, well-acted spin on a genre that all too often lives down to its brain-dead protagonists."[21] At Metacritic it has a score of 60 out of 100, based on reviews from 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[22] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B+ on an A+ to F scale.[23]
Richard Larson of Slant Magazine wrote "The ubiquity of Shakespeare's original template [of Romeo and Juliet] allows Warm Bodies some leeway in terms of believability, where otherwise it sometimes strains against its own logic. But the film's persistent charm encourages us to look past a few festering surface wounds and see the human heart beating inside, which is really what love is all about." Larson awarded the film three out of four stars.[24] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times deemed the film "a well-paced, nicely directed, post-apocalyptic love story with a terrific sense of humor and the, um, guts to be unabashedly romantic and unapologetically optimistic." He added that the movie "isn't perfect. It's a shame those Bonies are mediocre special-effects creations that run with a herky-jerky style... But those are minor drawbacks..."[9] Mary Pols of Time called it "an inventive charmer that visits all the typical movie scenarios of young love amid chaos and disaster... There are so many clever lines and bits of physical comedy worth revisiting that the movie seems like a likely cult classic."[25]
Stella Papamichael at Digital Spy gave it three out of five stars and called it "a truly deadpan romantic comedy" and "a witty reinvention of the genre like Shaun of the Dead before it, drawing parallels between the apathy of youth and the zombie masses," adding, "Hoult gets to deliver a wickedly dry voiceover."[26] Chris Packham of The Village Voice said in a negative review that "The film's intentions are way too good for its own good, producing bloodless romance and more shamefully bloodless carnage. Nobody kisses anyone else until it becomes clear that both parties have pulses, and everyone gets to keep all their limbs."[27]
Michael O'Sullivan said in his one-and-a-half star review for The Washington Post that the film is "Cute without being especially clever, it's as pallid and as brain-dead as its zombie antihero ... It's less funny and self-aware than Shaun of the Dead, less swooningly romantic than Twilight and less scary than pretty much anything else out there with zombies in it."[28]
Blending the romantic-comedy genre with zombies could have resulted in all sorts of bad cheesiness, but the film manages to be refreshingly original and funny without laying on too much cheese. Likewise, it could have been little more than a Twilight spoof. Instead Warm Bodies manages to find its own soul and, more importantly, its own beating heart.
I suppose I'm just slow on the uptake, but I didn't realize that Warm Bodies was an adaptation of "Romeo & Juliet" until the balcony scene, when the sentient zombie protagonist "R" sneaks into the fortified human encampment to warn Julie of encroaching danger.
I mean, the clues are all right there. "R" doesn't remember his name, only that it starts with the letter R. Julie is about as close to Juliet as you can get without totally giving it away. "R" and Julie, Romeo and Juliet...it's obvious, right?
There's the zombies (intent on eating humans and especially human brains which, in another clever twist, pass on human memories to the walking dead) and then there's the humans (who, understandably, want to kill the zombies.)
Julie's father is the leader of the humans. He's a military guy who Really Hates the zombies. Meanwhile, the zombies don't really have a leader---just like we see very little of Romeo's family in the play.
This is basically the same set-up as the Capulets and the Montagues...but with zombies and guns and brain-eating. There's even a zombie named "M" which may as well be a stand-in for Mercutio (though, alas, there is no "pox on both your houses" scene.)
On top of the witty narration from "R" (played wonderfully by Nicholas Hoult) and the strong performances of Julie (played by Teresa Palmer) and "M" (played by Rob Corddry) this Shakespearean twist was just subtle enough to be really enjoyable. Again, director Jonathan Levine could have made it all much more obvious and in-your-face, but he didn't and the film was stronger for it. John Malcovich plays Julie's father and is...well, he's John Malcovich.
At one point "R" is imagining the airport when it was populated by people instead of zombies. He imagines back to a time when people could really connect, express how they're feeling, and as he narrates this we're taken to a scene of the airport populated by living humans---men, women, children, all running around glued to their smartphones, not interacting at all. It's a great moment, and reminded me a bit of Shaun of the Dead.
Unlike Romeo & Juliet, however, this is a rom-com, not a tragedy. The hint is there in the name of the film: by its conclusion we have warm bodies, not cold ones. "R" does not go into a death-like slumber and Julie does not impale herself upon a knife. Instead, the zombies come back to life, mostly, and team up with the humans to eradicated the "bonies"---charred looking skeletons that are essentially zombies past saving.
Warm Bodies is a fun, funny zombie movie with a great twist that keeps it fresh even in a genre that's been done to death in recent years. If you miss it on the big screen, it's absolutely worth the price of a rental when it comes out on DVD or whatever online service you use.
03c5feb9e7