Warm Bodies review

                With the rise of horror ideas and monster icons in teenage mainstream media, it might look like horror as a genre is finally crawling out of its niche markets. Vampires, werewolves, slasher killers and now zombies have officially been placed, center stage into the tween zeitgeist.  But is it the mainstream that has changed to comfortably enter this morbid world or has horror been watered down and muted to fit into something more conventional? After all, we now have vampires who won’t kill to drink blood, buff, shirtless, werewolf heartthrobs, a serial killer who only kills the “bad guys”, and with Jonathan Lavine’s newest feature, “Warm Bodies”, we are introduced to a restrained, misunderstood zombie, with an extraordinary sense of self control.

                Nicholas Hoult plays a zombie named R, who lives amidst the end of civilization, after an infection kills most of human society, leaving only a few camps of gun-toting survivors.  When he and a horde of his shuffling, corpse companions attack a nearby base, R finds himself unexpectedly falling for the affections of a young, blonde girl named Julia (Teresa Palmer). Just after devouring her boyfriend, he then decides to protect her until he can manage his newly rekindled feelings and guide her to safety. Things get more complicated when a feral, skeleton army—known as the bonies—catches wind of their love, and they won’t have it. What’s worse is Julia’s militantly anti-zombie father (John Malcovich) can’t understand their adorable necrophilia either.

                I didn’t hate this movie but honestly that’s the best thing I can say about “Warm Bodies”. Structurally and technically I can’t fault the film too much. The direction is good, the effects are believable, the acting is actually solid, the pacing is efficient, and the soundtrack is pretty groovy. So why is it that I couldn’t help but be annoyed through most of it?

                When dealing with fictional creations like monsters and zombies, one’s allowed to change things a bit and riff on old tropes, as long as they don’t fundamentally alter the mythology beyond recognition.  If we are able to accept the rising dead as flesh eaters, why shouldn’t we accept that they could fall in love? For that matter, if we can accept that they can fall in love, why shouldn’t we accept that they don’t need to feed on human flesh anymore, or why shouldn’t they be able to talk fluently, or why shouldn’t they have a preference for vinyl records instead of digital music..? Are you catching my drift yet? 

                Also, let’s discuss these “bonies”: they’re malevolent, they run on instinct alone, they hunt in packs and they are dangerous; in other words, they're zombies!  I find their placement in this story to be very telling of the thematic problems that peppers the entire script. Because the writers have worked so hard to strip away the horror element of what a zombie is and does, they’ve contrived an uber-monster to put the danger component back into the fold. I say, why fix something that isn’t broken? Wouldn’t it be more exciting if R could kill and eat Julia at any moment? What if her instincts were wrong? What if their love was made more complicated because of R’s natural zombie hunger? Unfortunately, this movie isn’t concerned with anything too complicated.

                I know that I am probably not the demographic for this thing and I can appreciate that. Considering “Warm Bodies” is basically a post-twilight iteration of George A. Romero’s post-apocalypse, Jonathan Levine’s confident direction and Nick Hoult’s expressive performance almost elevates the obnoxiously hip and precious material to tolerable levels. Gothy, Hot-Topic-shopping, teens will surely go bananas, but I can’t help but feel that everyone involved in this production doesn’t have the respectable interest or even a general appreciation for the genre they are trying to subvert.

Grade: C-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2013