Warm Bodies (2013)
Directed by Jonathan Levine
After a zombie becomes involved with the girlfriend of one of his victims, their romance sets in motion a sequence of events that might transform the entire lifeless world.
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36 films that influenced Warm Bodies
What critics say influenced Warm Bodies
Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004) and Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, 2009) blended the horror with comedy to become affection and self-aware homages to the genre rather than parodies.
While it’s easy to dismiss the concept of “Warm Bodies” as just another young-adult supernatural romance that exchanges vampires and werewolves for flesh-hungry zombies, Levine’s film shares more in common with the modern, clever takes on the genre like “Shaun of the Dead” than it shares with the “Twilight” franchise.
“Warm Bodies” takes almost as much of its inspiration from “Zombieland” and “Shaun of the Dead” as it does from “Romeo and Juliet.”
Working from Isaac Marion's novel, writer-director Jonathan Levine (who saw the funny side of cancer in 50/50) bends the rules to make the story work and softens the violence, too, but it's still a witty reinvention of the genre like Shaun of the Dead before it, drawing parallels between the apathy of youth and the zombie masses.
It pales compared to the juiced-up entertainment of "Zombieland" or the we-are-all-walking-dead satire of "Shaun of the Dead."
( Shaun Of The Dead got across the same point in two quick paired shots, noting how little difference Simon Pegg sees in his average morning when everyone around him becomes a shuffling corpse, but that’s beside the point.)
There are also a couple of coy allusions to Romeo and Juliet, from a balcony scene to the leads’ names, but it’s equally interesting to compare the movie to films like Beauty and the Beast, Ghost or Twilight.
With every bite, R becomes increasingly drawn to visions of Perry’s gorgeous girlfriend, Julie (as in Juliet), who is seconds from becoming a zombie’s lunch herself when R rushes to the rescue and hauls her back to his lair, a la “Beauty and the Beast.”
Thus begins a story with underscored parallels to "Romeo & Juliet" (note the names), as well as to tales like "King Kong" and "Beauty and the Beast," with R starting to evolve and become more human while Julie gradually accepts that he doesn't want to eat her.
After stowing Julie away in the derelict 737 plane R calls home, a Beauty and the Beast effect—or as the DSM calls it, Stockholm Syndrome—comes into play.
Before you can say “Beauty and the Beast” (or maybe, “Luke and Laura”), Julie begins so see something attractive in R. per formula, this something is premised at least in part on her strained relationship with her dad, the odious General Grigio (John Malkovich), who lost his beloved wife to corpses and so bears a grudge.
But Twilight is a think piece compared with Bodies .
I was hoping, dear readers, for a relatively painless “Twilight” rip-off at the very most.
Warm Bodies is the product of Summit Entertainment, the distributor of the Twilight movies, and there's little doubt the hope is to attract a fraction of Stephenie Meyer's core audience.
Teresa Palmer plays the object of R's ardor, and though she may have been cast for her not-insignificant resemblance to Kristen Stewart, cashing in on that Twilight for zombies thing, Palmer has a lot of her own spark, and a really lovely, wholesome chemistry with Hoult.
Unsurprisingly, as R(omeo)’s Julie(t), Teresa Palmer will closely mimic Kristen Stewart’s every last hair-twitching, eye-rolling mannerism to ensure that the Twilight tourists in the audience get exactly what they are paying for.
Armchair critics have been comparing the film, sight unseen, to Twilight for its supernatural central pairing, but in execution, it’s far more like a twee, low-key, passive teen romance, along the lines of Nick And Nora’s Infinite Playlist , or Levine’s own 2008 film The Wackness .
It happened in the little-seen My Boyfriend's Back (1993), and the concept of "undead boyfriend" is back again with Warm Bodies, a certifiably strange but quietly appealing "zombie rom-com" that's based on the novel of the same name by Isaac Marion.
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Jumping back to my horror side though, I did immensely appreciate all the little nods to past horror films Warm Bodies threw in, be something as simple as showing the DVD for Lucio Fulci’s Zombie or something more implied like R’s constant commentary about typical everyday zombie knowledge.
Sly, good-natured humor referencing everything from "Pretty Woman" to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" gives way to tense, life-or-death chase sequences and an open-hearted sincerity.
There is a standout scene when Julie and Nora (Tipton) give R a human makeover that’s cute without being twee – it even self-referentially uses the song “Pretty Woman,” and all the young stars really sparkle.
This romance will further entail a zombie makeover a la “Pretty Woman” in order to make R pass as a member of One Direction (kidding), and “Boneys,” i.e., zombies that have morphed into ravenous living skeleton-monster thingies.
At one point, Julie and her best friend, Nora (the excellent Analeigh Tipton), embark on a zombie makeover and Nora puts on the song “Pretty Woman.”
The soundtrack is a particular kick, making crafty use of songs ranging from "Sitting Here in Limbo" to "Missing You" to "Pretty Woman."
While there are many literary and cultural variations on the cannibalistic undead beings, the 1968 George A Romero film Night of the Living Dead is commonly accepted to have set the contemporary standard for how zombies are imagined.
Movies about the dead returning to life have been around almost as long as cinema itself, but it is writer-director George A. Romero who popularized an entire subgenre of zombie films with 1968's "Night of the Living Dead" and its subsequent companion pieces, 1978's "Dawn of the Dead" and 1985's "Day of the Dead."
Yes, there’s enough new think on the zombie backstory here to fry the brains of hardcore Night of the Living Dead fans, but writer Isaac Marion creates a universe unique to Warm Bodies where these horror inconsistencies seem plausible, and Levine translates said universe to screen rather well.
Movies about the dead returning to life have been around almost as long as cinema itself, but it is writer-director George A. Romero who popularized an entire subgenre of zombie films with 1968's "Night of the Living Dead" and its subsequent companion pieces, 1978's "Dawn of the Dead" and 1985's "Day of the Dead."
There’s almost nothing in this movie that hasn’t been done better by other filmmakers, including the idea that zombies retain some shards of human identity — see George A. Romero’s underappreciated “Day of the Dead” — and the walled-off human city where Julie and her hardass anti-zombie dad (John Malkovich, in his recent gettin’-paid mode) and other survivors live, as seen in almost every apocalypse flick.
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David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977) may not be officially zombie films, but they contain many of the core elements and powerfully establish the venereal infection symbolism.
David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977) may not be officially zombie films, but they contain many of the core elements and powerfully establish the venereal infection symbolism.