Review of Warm Bodies, directed by Jonathan Levine

You know you’re starting to not be in with the youths when you’re at the library, you look at the movies, and then you see a bunch of movies that came out when you were in middle school.

I pulled out a DVD copy of Warm Bodies when I was at my local library branch and was staring at it pretty hard, thinking about how I had just watched Renfield with Hoult and that he looks almost exactly the same in some ways (despite a decade having passed in the meantime), when a kid standing next to me made a face and said that she had never heard of this movie. I then had an extended flashback when this originally came out.

Anyways, I checked the DVD out regardless and watched it a couple of days later. I’d never seen Warm Bodies when it was theaters back in the day, and, to be honest, I would kick myself if I had paid money to see this in theaters. Sure, it’s a fun movie if you’re in a certain kind of mood, but it’s not the greatest movie in the world.

Let’s get into the review.

A zombie falls in love with a human girl, unlocking the secret they all needed.

I guess we can say the main protagonist in this movie is R, a zombie, who, eight years into the zombie apocalypse, who tells us in the opening scene what really happened here. He can barely remember his name, and nowadays his home is an abandoned airport that’s full of zombies like him.

They can’t really speak, only grunt, moan, and form something close to words, but from the narration, we can figure out that they have minds of sorts. He has a best friend too: M. Sometimes they stand at the airport bar together and moan. We also learn that zombies can experience the memories of their victims when they eat them, which will play into the plot later.

So when R is with a group of zombies hunting for food one day, they come across a group of young adult humans looking for medical supplies. There’s an wall in between the world the zombies inhabit and the human world, and they sometimes have to venture over the wall in search of things they need. Julie, the daughter of the commander in the human section, is with her friends when R and his zombie pack attack them, and she loses sight of her boyfriend, Perry.

But when R sees Julie from across the room, he feels his heart beat briefly, which is shocking because it should be completely dead. He then eats her boyfriend Perry after being shot in the chest by him, and he lives through the memories of Perry’s and Julie’s relationship.

This elevates the attraction to Julie even more, and R decides to rescue her from being eaten, smearing zombie blood all over her face so she blends in, and then he takes her to the airport.

Of course she’s terrified at the fact she’s been just taken by a zombie and forced onto an abandoned airplane. He tries to communicate with her in his half-words, but that doesn’t go too well because she doesn’t trust him.

She slowly starts to trust him, especially after when she tries to escape and the zombies come after her in the process. He rescues her then, and they listen to records on the plane and play games. R’s heart continues to start beating, and he’s able to communicate more.

But Julie being a human, she wants to go home, and tries to escape again. When the zombies come after her, including M, R chases them off and then lets her go home in the process.

But when they’re wandering all the way back to the walled off enclave, he reveals to her that he was the one who ate Perry, which angers her and she heads home. He goes back to the airport and realizes the other zombies are becoming human too, and the Boneys, which eat anything with a heartbeat, are coming after them.

R and M then flee with a group towards the humans. R sneaks into the enclave and finds Julie’s house, where he is then introduced to her friend Nora. When he tells them what’s going on, they try to tell Julie’s father, but her father only wants to kill R.

Nora pulls out a gun on him and tells the other two to leave, so they flee. They find M and the other zombies attacked by Boneys, and this is the final square off.

When Julie and R are cornered, they have to jump off of a balcony, and R takes the impact for Julie. She kisses him when she realizes what he has done, and then her father arrives.

He shoots R, Julie turns around, and she realizes he is bleeding—he has become fully human again.

The humans and remaining zombies team up against the Boneys, and R and Julie become a couple as the wall crumbles not too longer after, symbolizing that the apocalypse has ended.

Overall Thoughts

Like I said, not the greatest movie. But I will admit: there were some moments here and there that really made me chuckle, especially when it came to the more subtle dark humor aspects.

Am I glad I watched the movie a decade after its release? Yes, I’ve always been curious about this movie ever since I saw the trailers as a teenager, and my moment to sit down with it finally came now.

It might not be considered high art at the end of the day, but I think it’s cute and it was entertainment for a brief while.

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