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#662 - Warm Bodies
Jonathan Levine, 2013
In the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, a male zombie experiences a radical change to his existence when he eats the brain of a human and develops an attraction to his victim's girlfriend.
The market for zombie entertainment is considerably saturated to the point where even the comedic variations on the normally-horrific sub-genre are also starting to become afflicted by fatigue. Though Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead was hardly the first zombie comedy, it definitely proved groundbreaking enough for other people to try putting out their own parodic takes on the mindless flesh-eaters. Much like Wright's film, Jonathan Levine's Warm Bodies is a romantic comedy that takes place during the zombie apocalypse - however, it offers a distinct variation on that it makes it about the relationship between a human and a zombie. This is at least explained away by the world-building that draws a line between the everyday zombies who still have some semblance of intelligence (yet will still go after humans wherever possible) and the "boneys", which are extremely rotten and skeletal zombies that are only driven by their killer instinct (much like the feral ghouls from the Fallout game series). Nicholas Hoult plays one of the regular zombies whose rich yet nervous internal monologue is a far cry from the lumbering corpse that he is in reality. When he joins a group of other zombies on a search for humans to feed on, he encounters a group of human scavengers. After killing one (Dave Franco) and eating his brain, Hoult starts to develop an affection for his victim's girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) due to his ingesting of Franco's memories and proceeds to rescue her from his undead comrades. He brings her back to his makeshift home inside a passenger plane and, though she is understandably distrustful of him, she gradually warms to him. Meanwhile, her father (John Malkovich), who just so happens to be in charge of the human resistance, is willing to stop at nothing to find her...
I think that a film that's primarily classified as a comedy (even if it's arguably parodying a separate genre and thus ends up taking said genre's conventions seriously) can get away with not generating much in the way of laughter if the rest of it is handled well enough, and Warm Bodies definitely doesn't strike me as a bad movie when all is said and done. The twists on the zombie lore are interesting enough, but the same can't really be said for the fairly standard plot that only offers the slightest variations on familiar rom-com tropes. They don't delve into totally predictable cliché but they never rise above their station to become truly interesting in their own right. There are some fairly capable performers in the cast and none of them turn in truly bad performances (except possibly Malkovich, who really does seem like he's going through the motions here). The production value's not too bad and things are kept rolling along at a decent pace across its brief running time, but there doesn't feel like a whole lot to recommend to it. It's got heart and it doesn't go overboard in painting Hoult's zombie hero as a hipster (even when it justifies his preference for vinyl records by saying that it sounds better to zombie ears) but I'd hardly call it essential.
Jonathan Levine, 2013
In the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, a male zombie experiences a radical change to his existence when he eats the brain of a human and develops an attraction to his victim's girlfriend.
The market for zombie entertainment is considerably saturated to the point where even the comedic variations on the normally-horrific sub-genre are also starting to become afflicted by fatigue. Though Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead was hardly the first zombie comedy, it definitely proved groundbreaking enough for other people to try putting out their own parodic takes on the mindless flesh-eaters. Much like Wright's film, Jonathan Levine's Warm Bodies is a romantic comedy that takes place during the zombie apocalypse - however, it offers a distinct variation on that it makes it about the relationship between a human and a zombie. This is at least explained away by the world-building that draws a line between the everyday zombies who still have some semblance of intelligence (yet will still go after humans wherever possible) and the "boneys", which are extremely rotten and skeletal zombies that are only driven by their killer instinct (much like the feral ghouls from the Fallout game series). Nicholas Hoult plays one of the regular zombies whose rich yet nervous internal monologue is a far cry from the lumbering corpse that he is in reality. When he joins a group of other zombies on a search for humans to feed on, he encounters a group of human scavengers. After killing one (Dave Franco) and eating his brain, Hoult starts to develop an affection for his victim's girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) due to his ingesting of Franco's memories and proceeds to rescue her from his undead comrades. He brings her back to his makeshift home inside a passenger plane and, though she is understandably distrustful of him, she gradually warms to him. Meanwhile, her father (John Malkovich), who just so happens to be in charge of the human resistance, is willing to stop at nothing to find her...
I think that a film that's primarily classified as a comedy (even if it's arguably parodying a separate genre and thus ends up taking said genre's conventions seriously) can get away with not generating much in the way of laughter if the rest of it is handled well enough, and Warm Bodies definitely doesn't strike me as a bad movie when all is said and done. The twists on the zombie lore are interesting enough, but the same can't really be said for the fairly standard plot that only offers the slightest variations on familiar rom-com tropes. They don't delve into totally predictable cliché but they never rise above their station to become truly interesting in their own right. There are some fairly capable performers in the cast and none of them turn in truly bad performances (except possibly Malkovich, who really does seem like he's going through the motions here). The production value's not too bad and things are kept rolling along at a decent pace across its brief running time, but there doesn't feel like a whole lot to recommend to it. It's got heart and it doesn't go overboard in painting Hoult's zombie hero as a hipster (even when it justifies his preference for vinyl records by saying that it sounds better to zombie ears) but I'd hardly call it essential.