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I wanted to start with a positive statement about the movie just to spur you on a little further for the review: Warm Bodies is nothing at all like Twilight. Now I was worried when I sat down to watch and the theatre went dark - signaling to the guy two rows ahead of me to turn his phone the fuck off or to at least set it to vibrate and stop playing angry birds. He was a bit slow on the uptake and 18 minutes into the movie he finally caught on that he didn't just pay 8 dollars to rent a comfy chair, but there was indeed shit happening on the screen in front of him. I found myself feeling worried again when the new age hipster music prevalent in the Twilight movies (yes I have seen them, no I am not a woman or gay, but I am married, so I might as well be) began to play and I did sort of jokingly try to walk out when I saw the logo for the studio that foisted the Twilight saga upon us, Summit.
Warm Bodies is first and foremost a zombie movie. I know as a people we have had zombies as the lead dog of pop culture for a while now, so a "different" approach to the same thing is refreshing now and again. Warm Bodies suffers from poor advertising, so much so that it has been described to me as a different movie, each time someone has told me about it. I've heard "Twilight with zombies", a "RomZomCom" (WTF izzat?) and a "zombie love story", and none of these is really true with exception to maybe RomZomCom because that isn't a thing.
The movie opens with a zombie narrating his zombie life explaining the important facts we'll need for the story.
- Firstly there is no recollection of your earlier life once you're a zombie, although the main character, played by Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy, X-Men:First Class) does remember that his name starts with an "R" but that's all.
- Second, they do have relationships and conversations, which are mostly inarticulate grunts with one or two words, showcased with R's friendship with another zombie, M played by Rob Corddry (Old School, Hot Tub Time Machine.)
- Third, there exists a subspecies to the zombie, an endgame if you will, that the zombies refer to as, "Bonies," which is a state that a zombie will get into where it gets so apathetic/bored or can't get the food to have the energy (it's not really FLESHED out in the movie, pun intended) to go on so they just start to peel their flesh away until nothing but a bones and like a primer layer. As you can imagine this makes them quite irritable and they will go after and eat anything with a pulse.
- Lastly, R is a huge hoarder, he's picked out an airplane at the airport his group of zombies hangs out in, and he's filled it with bits and baubles, including a record collection.
The human interaction starts when a group of teens are released from their compound to search for medical supplies. The scavengers are led by the daughter of the compound leader, Julie played by Teresa Palmer (I am Number Four) and her boyfriend Perry played by Dave Franco (James Franco's Mom's womb.) The humans are set upon by R's entourage and here we learn that zombies like human's brains because as they eat them they get that human's memories, also they do it for self preservation in that if the destroy the human brain the human can't become a zombie too. We see this first hand as R kills Perry and eats the shit out of his brains. After a flashback of the dead early into the movie Perry's, R sees Julie newly defenseless and rather than feeding on her he decides to save her. He smears some goo from a gunshot he received on her face and leads her to his plane at the epicenter of the of the zombie horde.
R's heart begins to beat again and he starts to speak in full sentences the more he hangs out with Julie and he lies to her about needing to lay low in the plane for a few days, to spend time with her. Julie gets some insight into zombie non-life, and sees first hand that maybe zombies aren't so bad. There are a few throw away scenes of R learning to sort of drive and Bonies sniffing around.
Some of the better lines are given to some of the background characters with Corddry getting to drop the movie's only f-bomb. As time goes on you can see the development of each character, both as people and zombie. Granted it's built on lies and eating the brain of her boyfriend, but watching the relationship build between R and Julie is actually quite heart-warming.
There are quite a few twists along the way and much more to the story that I don't want to give away due to respect of the movie, and really a desire for others to see and enjoy it. This movie is certainly worth the money and the time, I completely recommend it.
If you get to see it or have seen it already, let me know how you feel about it!
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Disclosure: This is a non-sponsored review. All product was purchased by me and the purpose of this review is based solely on my own interests. No product or monetary compensation was given to me by said company.
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