Warm Bodies [2013] – Movie Review

Vampires had their movies. Witches had their movies. Warm Bodies is the attempt to get zombies not to feel left out. It is a post apocalyptic world, as usual, and most of the Earth’s population of humans has died and risen again as zombies. The exact mechanism of this is never fully illustrated but you get the picture: pale faced, veined people roam around, searching for their next victim with a beating heart to eat.

R (Nicholas Hoult) is one of those zombies – but with a twist. He calls himself weird. And compared to his fellow undead, he might as well be. He likes to collect items that humans find of value. He often wonders about his days pre-transformation and is absolutely smitten by Julie (Theresa Palmer), a human whom he encounters on one of his feeding trips. R takes Julie back to his zombie camp and takes care of her – his relationship with Julie gets his heart to beat again and commences a transformation that could prove pivotal to changing the course of things.

You’re not watching Warm Bodies for the acting. You’re not watching it for the story, which is comical at times. You’re watching it because it is a movie that entertains you for about 90 minutes and that’s pretty much it. There’s nothing badass about this. The zombies are nowhere near scary – even the bad kind which eventually become the movie’s main villains. The sense of threat that the humans are supposedly always faced with is never communicated. The movie’s main point is to get the love story between its zombie and human main characters across and the two lead’s chemistry definitely helps with this.

Warm Bodies‘ main forte is that it is a refreshing take on the genre it plays in. It has a sufficient dose of charm to keep you going through the short running time and enough funny moments to make it memorable. I am not entirely sure how fans of the book upon which this is based will react but if you have nothing better to do and decide to grab a movie at your local theatre, odds are you won’t find something much better currently playing.

6/10