Don’t let the thought of another zombie movie chill you from the inside out. “Warm Bodies,” in theaters now, will keep you engaged with chills, thrills and some giggles to help keep your insides toasty and blood moving.
From the opening scene you know that “R” (Nicholas Hoult), a zombie unusually aware of his situation, will be the main source of comedy in the movie.
“Warm Bodies” does a good job of setting up the story. Since R does not remember how the zombie outbreak started, the movie doesn’t go into non-essential details that would prolong the movie.
The characters in “Warm Bodies” are introduced shortly into the movie, giving time to build them up. Certain moments fall short when Julie (Teresa Palmer) is less dramatic than the scene calls for. Both characters are hilariously awkward creating a great metaphor for young love. The character of Julie’s dad, played by John Malkovich, could have used more development. Hoult does a great job as a zombie falling in love and Rob Corddry does an excellent job as R’s supportive best friend M.
“Warm Bodies” is full of metaphors to life in modern society. The most prominent metaphor is in a scene where R recaps how things used to be while silhouettes of people on their phones pass around him. The metaphors convey the underlying themes of the film well. ‘Love conquers all’, ‘people can change’ and ‘good always wins’ are a few of the classic themes presented with a unique twist by the film.
Special effects and makeup for the movie are well done. The transformation that R makes is done in small subtle steps. The zombies aren’t too gory and look like they have gone through the normal wear and tear a zombie would instead of all looking like car wrecks.
The music and sound in “Warm Bodies” is well placed, though sometimes the song doesn’t fit the scene. Throughout the movie an absence of unnecessary background noises allows you to focus more intently on the scenes.
You will have a hard time finding bad things to say about “Warm Bodies.” The solid cast nicely performs the several elements that differentiate it from the hundreds of other zombie movies that fill theaters every year. “Warm Bodies” gets 4.5 out of 5. It’s only marked down because it is classified as a horror, romance, comedy. Horror was nowhere to be found. Its romantic story, deep metaphors and hundreds of laughs make “Warm Bodies” a movie to see this Valentine’s Day.