I love this movie. “Warm Bodies” is a cute, feel good, post-apocalyptic love story with a terrific sense of humor, romance and optimism.
Nicholas Hoult gives a great performance as “R”, if not for the small fact he’s undead, having been recently zombified.
R’s attempt to fill us in on the exact nature of the zombie apocalypse is one of the film’s many affectionate nods to the all-too-familiar elements of so many zombie TV shows and movies.
Unable to recall even his full first name (he’s pretty sure it begins with the letter R), the kid knows he’s a zombie and doesn’t deny his hunger for living human flesh — but there are still traces of a real person inside. He spends his days in an airport where he imagines the previous lives of his fellow zombies, listens to music in the grounded airplane he’s converted into his nest and becomes friends with M (Rob Corddry), who also seems to have more than a trace of his humanity still deep inside.
There are three distinct species populating the Earth post-worldwide infection nightmare:
Humans. They’re scarred from seeing spouses, children and friends turned into zombies or killed, but they’re armed and they WILL shoot any corpse that comes within growling distance of their walled city.
Zombies, who wander the streets, live in airports and warehouses, and are always on the alert for the next human meal, maybe hopelessly lost.
“The Bonies” whom are zombies that have given up all hope and have resorted to tearing off their own flesh, leaving behind skeletal killing creatures that would just as soon take down a zombie as a human.
There’s a key difference between the dead and the really and truly dead — a difference that comes to light when R starts to have a crush on Julie (Teresa Palmer).
Their time together involves mass slaughter and the consumption of brains, which allows a zombie to access a dead character’s memory. But other than those small details, the relationship of R and Julie isn’t all that different from what we’ve seen in any number of human/human as well as human/supernatural creature romances, including the “Twilight” movies.
Hoult and Palmer have a lovely, natural chemistry, even when the circumstances are nasty or silly — or both.
Timing in at 97 minutes, “Warm Bodies” is terrific entertainment.