Warm Bodies (2013)

When it's over, cute, sweet, warm and fuzzy. These are the words that best describe the feelings I got from watching Warm Bodies. When R (Nicholas Hoult), the zombie, meets Julie (Theresa Palmer), the human, during a feeding frenzy, R's need to protect Julie starts a chain of events, which offers humanity a second chance. The film had wit and charm, and much of that manifested through R's thoughts and Hoult's portrayal of a lonely corpse longing for companionship. The idea of a zombie love story seemed ridiculous, but weeks prior to the film's release, my feelings toward  it changed. I was actually wondering how the story would evolve. The concept became intriguing. I haven't read Issac Marion's book, which the film was based on, but I think Marion was quite smart when he used zombies as a metaphor for people with illnesses in our present day. The idea of a cure deriving from something as basic as friendship and understanding was a unique approach at curing the zombie plague as well as a direct commentary on our society's stigma on illnesses. Definitely, the intelligence of the story kept me interested as I kept finding parallels between the film and real life. There were essentially three groups of characters - the Bonies (in relation to the real world - the crazies who have completely lost their grounding in society), the Corpses (in relation to the real world - the people with illnesses who just want to be understood) and the Humans (in relation to the real world - the paranoid and closed minded people who fear what they don't understand). Overall, I found the film entertaining, fresh, and insightful. I wish there was more back story on the characters, especially the Bonies and what triggered them to become Bonies. The unexpected popularity of Warm Bodies has prompted Marion to start writing a prequel and a sequel, which will answer questions about the origins of the plague and the future of mankind. 

My rating: 3.5 our of 5