This is a sponsored feature. All opinions are 100% from Her Campus.
The opinions expressed in this review have no affiliation with Jonathan Levine, Mandeville Films or Summit Entertainment and are the author’s alone.
Jonathan Levine’s new flick Warm Bodies, which is based on the book of the same name by Isaac Marion, premiered in theaters about two weeks before Valentine’s Day, and while I was late for that, I managed to catch it on Friday, in the morning when you’ve got just about the entire theater to yourself. A mash-up of zombie apocalypse and rom-com, Warm Bodies takes place in a world torn apart by a plague of mysterious origins that turns its victims into zombies. If you get bit, you’ll be zomb-ified. If the zombie spares you that and eats your brain instead, he’ll gain your thoughts, feelings and memories. So it goes for our zombie protagonist “R” (played by Nicholas Hoult) who meets the girl of his dreams during a hunt for brains, Julie (Theresa Palmer), the daughter of over-protective and paranoid Colonel Grigio (John Malkovich) who governs the enclave erected to shield the few human survivors of the apocalypse from the hordes of brain-craving corpses outside the wall.
He rescues her from his pack and takes her back to his “home” in an abandoned airplane, where he tries to court her in the best way he knows how. Making a connection is not easy for a number of reasons, among them R’s limited ability to communicate besides in grunts and groans and the fact that he had killed Julie’s boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco) during the raid and eaten his brains while Julie was distracted with shooting zombies. But still, the time R and Julie spend together slowly puts warmth back into his once lifeless body, and the pair’s example may just do the same for the rest of the undead population…except perhaps the Bonies, who are described as zombies who are “too far gone,” reduced to skeletons and eager to devour the next thing with even a semblance of a heartbeat.
While the concept does sound similar to the notorious Twilight Saga, and does have some parallels to it, trust me when I say that it runs circles around Twilight. There’s an eerie charm about this expy of Romeo and Juliet in its bleak setting and R’s deadpan narration, while it does take some considerate artistic license where science and zombie mythology are concerned and has a strangely idealistic perspective on the power of human connection in a world rampant with mindless beasts who have lost what made them human. It may also make you uncomfortable at parts, such as when you notice how many of the human characters seem almost as apathetic as the zombies they combat. Fans of hardcore horror may be disappointed with this film as the carnage is relatively bloodless; Warm Bodies is quite tame in that regard. As a comedy, it won’t bust your guts (see what I did there?), but it has its moments where you can’t help but smile for all its gloom and doom, such as when R and his best friend M (Rob Corddry) start to expand their vocabulary or when Julie’s best friend Nora (Analeigh Tipton) tries to play “Pretty Woman” during R’s makeover sequence. It succeeds the most as a romance, however offbeat, with R and Julie’s relationship as something like Romeo and Juliet with shades of Beauty and the Beast. In a way, their love, like the plague, ends up infecting everyone else, breathing in life where there was none. This is a rom-com that I can sink my teeth into, but it might not be for everyone.
The taste in music ain’t bad, either. Bruce Springsteen, John Waite, The Scorpions…can’t beat the classics.
I would recommend seeing this odd flick for yourself and the book on which it’s based, by yourself or with your sweetie, alive or dead. Overall, out of five stars, I give it three and a half.
Links:
Movie poster found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm_Bodies_(film)