Breaking out of Nicholas Sparks and the “Twilight” saga, romance takes on a new face — a dead one.
“Warm Bodies” unites the romantic comedy and zombie genres, making one hilarious “zom-romcom.” Young director and screenwriter Jonathan Levine twists a classic love story into a slow-to-start but heartwarming tale of zombie love.
Levine successfully makes the viewer feel compassion for zombies and shows there is more to them than eating brains and slowly stumbling from place to place.
Nicholas Hoult plays the role of R, the equivalent of a zombie Romeo.
In the beginning, R spends his time wandering the halls of an abandoned airport he calls home with fellow corpses. R proves to be capable of thought and decides to venture into the city with a pack of his dead brethren to find food. On his hunt, R manages to eat the brain of a young man. While eating his brain, R experiences all of the young man’s memories including some with his girlfriend, Julie, thought to be Juliet.
R finally notices the horrified girlfriend and instantly feels connected. Instead of being a responsible, thoughtless zombie and eating her too, R decides to bring her home back to the airport.
By eating her boyfriend’s brains, R lives vicariously through the ex dead lover to see Julie before and during the zombie apocalypse. In the end, as he eats the remaining brain, R sees his victim’s last memory. R can see himself for what he truly is.
A heartless, brain-eating zombie. But is he?
Every previous zombie movie has portrayed zombies as thoughtless and heartless. The defining characteristic that separates humans from corpses lies in the ability to dream. Zombies are unable to dream, but as R falls more and more in love with Julie while she’s trapped in his airplane, he begins dreaming and feeling compassion.
Julie’s father, unlike her, refuses to acknowledge that corpses are capable of compassion. He has accepted the fate of humanity and created the fort in which all survivors of the city reside.
A few one-sided conversations, lucid dreams and an empty gas tank later, Julie returns home. It’s up to her and R to convince surviving members of humanity that zombies can change.
Corpses are capable of love.
