‘Warm Bodies’ is a zombie film uniquely different. It’s not of those typical movies of terrifying zombies running around craving for flesh, which is something quite of a horror for audiences. ‘Warm Bodies’ had a different approach; it focuses on the development of the relationship between Julie, a young woman, and “R”, a zombie, and how their eventual romance develops throughout which also leads to the group of zombies to change and return to human ‘life’ form. Overall, this movie can be categorized as a paranormal romantic zombie comedy film, which is based on a novel of the same name. This movie is released back on February this year and I only watched it just now.
It stars Nicholas Hoult as “R”, Teresa Palmer as Julie, and also Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Analeigh Tipton and John Malkovich. This film certainly offers a sweet and interesting spin to a genre that all too often been really lifeless. The film is noted and positively received for displaying human characteristics in zombie characters, and also for being told from a zombie’s perspective. This allows the audiences to get ‘connected’ and engaged not only to the overall plot but also to ‘R’, the zombie. It is still grounded to ‘zombie-setting’ but overturned with a twist. The story went well paced and nicely directed with a bit of sense of humor added into this post-apocalyptic love story that made it certainly enjoyable to watch. This film is not violent or bloody and hence quite relevant to children too.
I first get to know Nicholas Hoult from his performance in ‘Jack The Giant Slayer’ released this year too and he delivered an amazing performance on that one. For this zombie film that requires a totally different acting approach, Nicholas done a great job too. As a zombie, he had to express himself tough through facial gestures and speak only one or two words out while maintaining his rigid crooked movement. His convincing performance here certainly cemented his position as one of the rising young talented stars. For female fans of him, he is ‘dead’ sexy in this one. Teresa Palmer also pour in amazing performance, and the two of them had quite a spark or good chemistry in this film.
The movie also did offers heart-racing moments mostly on the encounter between the humans joining forces with the ‘cured’ zombies up against the Boneys, heartless skeleton corpses. However, all that exciting scenes are mostly reserved till the end part of the film and the lack of details put to the protagonists; Boneys’ creation (obviously computer-generated and looks too fake), made things not that impacting. However, the strong interesting love story of Julie and R saved the day. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Warm Bodies’ a total of 7.4. Like what Palmer said; ‘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.’ I certainly agreed with her statement. A good message from this film.
(Images in this post are from various sources throughout the world wide web)
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