Warm Bodies
Jonathan Levine
The story: R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie shuffling about aimlessly until he meets the lovely, and human, Julie (Teresa Palmer). When he decides to protect Julie instead of feasting on her as a second course after her boyfriend, it sets off a chain of events with momentous consequences for the zombie horde. Based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Isaac Marion.

There is life yet in the undead genre.
Shaun Of The Dead (2004) had previously mashed up genres and billed itself as a rom-zom-com, a romantic zombie comedy. On the other hand, the ongoing television series The Walking Dead has been pushing the boundaries when it comes to depicting gore and violence.
With Warm Bodies, writer-director Jonathan Levine, who last helmed the cancer comedy 50/50 (2011), still manages to give us something fresh.
The book’s zombie point of view has been preserved, the unusual perspective generating some welcome humour.
We first hear R voicing the thoughts in his head as he wonders why he is unable to connect with anyone. “Oh right, it’s cos I’m dead,” he concludes.
He might be a sensitive young man on the inside, but from the outside, R is like any other zombie – a growling shuffler who looks like death and smells of rot.
His initial encounter with Julie is less than promising. He is part of a pack of zombies attacking her and her friends and he ends up snacking on her boyfriend’s brain. That means that R also consumes his memories of Julie.
Hoult, the About A Boy star (2002) recently seen in Jack The Giant Slayer (2013), is charmingly gauche as he goes about trying to woo Julie. He is frustrated by his own inarticulation and, instead, plays retro music on vinyls to signal that there is more to him than the average zombie.
And, yes, the film has a perfectly judged soundtrack from the nostalgic rock of John Waite’s Missing You to indie darlings The National’s broodily atmospheric Runaway.
Palmer (Take Me Home Tonight, 2011), meanwhile, does a credible job with the role of the spunky Julie, who begins to question what she knows about zombies.
There is more to Warm Bodies, though, than just some fluffy piece of entertainment with a canny mix of young romance and the popular undead genre.
It can also be read as a take on emotional alienation and its cure. Ultimately, this zombie flick makes the same famous exhortation as English writer E.M. Forster: Only connect.
(ST)