WARM BODIES

Warm Bodies (18)

Director: Jonathan Levine
Screenplay: Jonathan Levine
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich
Bros before brains

Okay. I’ll admit it. When I first heard about this being filmed, the news was about as welcome as a cat-flap on a submarine. Like most genre fans, my thoughts were instantly “Twilight Sparkly Zombies”, which inspired a quick trip to the WHSmith “Young Adult” book section with a blowtorch and some petrol… I forgot about it for a while, apart from some snorty derision when I saw it would be a PG-13 in the US and a 12-A in the UK. Then I saw the trailer … actually it didn’t look too bad. The zombies looked okay, there was a blatant reference to “Zombie Flesh Eaters”, and is that John-Frickin’-Malkovich? Okay, I wasn’t expecting much, but I’ll give it a go.

The film is set 8 years after a zombie apocalypse, caused by who-knows-what. It could have been an infected chimp muses the main character (Hello “28 Days Later”!), which is the first of many zombie film references. The story follows one particular zombie, who becomes known as “R” (as he can’t remember the rest of his name). “R”, played nicely by Nicholas Hoult, is a remarkably erudite and intelligent zombie on the inside, but like all zombies he looks like shit on the outside and can only grunt and feed. His narration kick-starts the proceedings, and chips in on other occasions during the film. His memory is missing large chunks; all he knows is to travel in packs, and to feed off humans.

Things start to change when he becomes compulsively attracted to Julie (Teresa Palmer), who is the daughter of General Grigio (John Malkovich), a leader of a dwindling pocket of human resistance. This is partly because she is feisty and beautiful, but mostly because he’s just chomped the brains of her boyfriend and knows what a catch she is! The developing relationship of “R” and Julie is the main focus of the story, along with the implications it has for the rest of the world.

Yes, this is a PG-13 / 12A film, but luckily these are NOT twinkly, family-friendly zombies. They could have come straight out of a Romero film. They congregate in familiar places (Hello, “Dawn of the Dead”!), which in this case is an airport. They hunt in groups and are wary of guns. They even chow down on humans, and prefer the brains for God’s sake!

Obviously, this is not shown explicitly, but neither is it shied away from, so kudos for that. In this lore, the Z-folk eat brains, not to stop themselves feeling the rotting of their bodies (Hello “Return of the Living Dead”!), but to experience memories and feel humanity again. “R” even keeps some hidden away somewhere to snack upon occasionally.

The most intriguing part of this Zombie set-up is that “R” and his immediate … err … acquaintances are in a transitional state. If they fully reject their humanity and give into the feral part of their nature, they literally strip the flesh off their bodies and become “Bonies”, which are stronger more aggressive deadites. Of course, a lot of this is allegorical, and meant to represent our loss of humanity in society, yadda-yadda. But as a concept for a bona-fide Zombie movie, it doesn’t take away their horrific natures or grim tendencies. It also echoes the evolutionary arc from Romero’s “Land of the Dead”, and his predilection for NOT showing them as necessarily the “bad-guys”
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The two leads, Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer are particularly good in their roles. Hoult especially, is a great sympathetic zombie. His blank stare and adopted duck-face is perfectly fitting and evolves when necessary. His halting grunts and staccato wordplay is well used. Hoult also has the acting chops to pull off a few difficult scenes, namely in one where he eats the brains of a victim and experiences the death of the owner by his own hands, culminating in a wordless display of self-loathing and anger. His voice-overs are often funny (“Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”) and quite touching, but I think if they had decided to go without that narration, it would have stood up better, as they are no real stumbling blocks in terms of understandable narrative. Maybe they were trying to emulate other recent zombie films (Hello, “Zombieland”!). Oddly enough, Malkovich is so laid-back in his role of humanity’s last general that he seems to have been doped! He only really (ironically) shows signs of life, when he confronts his daughter and her zombie boyfriend in the climax of the film.

I haven’t read the YA novel that the film is based on (Young Adult fiction is my Kryptonite!), but Jonathan Levine (“The Wackness”) directs the story well enough. It’s not a perfect film by any means. It’s a touch heavy on the saccharine (there’s even a balcony scene … “R” & Julie … Geddit… Oh well, please yourselves), the allegories beat you over the head (Don’t lose your humanity … Dude!), the “Bonies” are too CGI-ey and there are waaaa-aaay too many soft-rock montages. The nice thing about this though, is that the film itself acknowledges some of the shortcomings. Julie explains why she got over her boyfriend’s death so easily in a nice scene (which seemed to be a sticking point up until then). Also, the musical montages themselves are mocked when one character plays Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” whilst a zombie is getting made up to look human. “Why are you playing that?” says one character. “Because it’s funny” shrugs another.

There are loads of other nice touches, like “R” listening to vinyl records, because they sound more “alive”, and the way in which the “humanity” plague starts to infect the zombies. There’s also a nice pretend-you’re-a-zombie scene as well (Hello, “Shaun of the Dead”!) I must admit I also had a huge grin when two certain opposing forces join up. Maybe the climatic moments are a little twee, but they befit the incidents leading up to them.

I feel like I shouldn’t like it, but damn it! … I can’t hate a film that does NOT bite the genre hand that feeds it (unlike other films *cough*Twilight*cough*), and respects the lore and the movies that came before it. It’s sweet-natured, fun, and has a life-affirming message that’s hard to be cynical about. Judging by some of the positive reviews circulating from even the more “hard-nosed” horror sites, it seems I’m not the only one …