Warm Bodies – An Infectiously Optimistic Spin on the Zombie Genre
Warm Bodies is absolutely refreshing in every respect. Based on the novel of the same name by Isaac Marion, the film directed by Jonathan Levine (50/50), delivers the perfect blend of humour, romance and sweet optimism that stands out in contrast to the cynicism and violence that dominates much of our entertainment.
The first half of the film met my expectations where the second exceeded them; it’s funny, cute and punctuated by a dryly funny voice-over by a “highly unusual” zombie, R (Nicholas Hoult) that introduces us into this world from a different perspective than we’re used to, through the eyes of the undead.
Teresa Palmer’s Julie gives us the other side of the coin . She is one of the survivors, a child of the apocalypse having grown up in the walled city that divides the living from the undead. Julie is part of the paramilitary type organization that is trained in weaponry and goes on scouting and supply missions for the city. When a supply run mission she is on is compromised by a zombie attack she meets R and the forbidden romance finds its beginnings in the most unusual of circumstances.
The romance between R and Julie plays off the classic “Romeo and Juliet”, and while the homage is very direct in certain instances it feels perfectly at home in the self-aware tone of the film without detracting from any other story elements. The optimism of the film worms its way into the Shakespearean tragedy and produces what we can only call a zom-rom-com.
The soundtrack pulls from both contemporary pop and classic rock, and through the use diagetic and non-diagetic music, builds an eerily relatable world. The moment Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm” started playing I got shivers. Other notable moments include the perfect comedic note using of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Women” (trust me), Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” and The National’s “Runaway”.
The film acknowledges the genre conventions of both romance and zombie films that it is working within without crossing into a distracting level self-awareness. The film becomes something special when it uses the awareness of these conventions to defy them and make this story more than it might have been. In the second half the film shifts into something almost unexpected, exceeding the scope of what I could have predicted the film would be. It becomes more than just a love story between an unlikely couple but a story of revolution brought about by that love and the power of human connection.
Warm Bodies also stars John Malkovich, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco and Analeigh Tipton and is in theatres now!
