Warm Bodies (2013)

The story has been told countless times. Boy meets girl, some sort of circumstance prevents boy and girl from being together. Boy and girl overcome said obstacle and are together in the end. What is new and fresh about Warm Bodies (2013), is that the hindrance to R’s and Julie’s ever after is that he is dead and has reanimated as a flesh eating zombie. The premise of the film surmises that love really does conquer all and prevails even over the walking dead. While Warm Bodies is an exciting new way of looking at a zombie outbreak, the execution was not all that strong. However, even tho the end result is not as effective as it could be, ultimately the love story between R and Julie is a modern day Romeo and Juliet and is entertaining.

Zombie’s have come a long way since Béla Lugosi stared in White Zombie (1932) and George A. Romero brought them to a modern silver screen in the iconic Night of the Living Dead (1968). They have evolved from slow walking misunderstood shuffling demons, to comedic mohawk wearing creatures  in Return of the Living Dead (1985) to the athletic marathon runners in Zach Synder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) cult classic remake of the 1978 film. Shaun of the Dead (2004) introduced us both to the modern day zomedy and that romance can still exist within an apocalypse. Fido (2004) and Zombieland (2009) continued the elements of a zomedy and went further into a coming-of-age story to add depth to complexity of the zombie. Warm Bodies continues this trend of being more than just flesh eating dead things. There is more than meets the eye of the undead.

The question remains as to how the outbreak of the undead began, and there is often a continual debate among fans as to what truly is a zombie. George A. Romero often is coined as being the Godfather of the zombie film. [Rec] (2007) and 28 Days Later (2002) attempted to answer the how, with that they are an infected by some sort of government experiment gone wrong. However, less often tackled is the approach to cure the infected. Warm Bodies has attempted to solve the problem and their solution is love.

The film is short, simple and sweet. To compare it to other films such as Twilight (2008) is a fallacy, because other than the fact that there are love scenes, there are no similarities between these films. Warm Bodies is first and foremost a comedy. It is meant to be a bit absurd and you have to watch it with an open mind. Of course there are some scenes that make you roll your eyes, because the cheese factor is over the top. But you can’t help but smile for a lot of the movie, it is a sweet love story about how humanity is exhumed.

In a genre that is dominated by filmmakers trying to one-up each each-other in the gore factor, it is refreshing to see a film that utilizes the same subject matter but in a beautiful fashion. The message is simple, we can all be saved by loving our fellow man if we just open up to the opportunity to feel and engage with each other.