Warm Bodies

The Book

I will start by confessing that if there is one type of monster film I avoid it is a zombie movie. The walking dead still hold a subconscious fear over me and they continue to be the one thing that gives me nightmares.
Reading this book helped me to examine those fears and think about why zombies have developed into one of the zeitgeist monsters at this time. As our fears and beliefs in heaven and hell disappear along with religion, what is left? When our soul or life force stops, the ultimate insult that could happen would be for our bodies to carry on without that spark of consciousness that makes us human.
As well as the deeper questions, I also purely enjoyed the story itself as a radical and new twist on Romeo and Juliet. There is a plague on both their houses - a zombie plague.  "R" gradually develops an attachment for Julia, after he eats her boyfriend's brain and acquires his memories. He takes her back to his Hive at the airport and we get to see the "life" zombies lead when off camera.

These zombies have rituals and a parody of human life, however, with marriages and assigned children, which makes them more interesting than the usual shuffling groaning undead. The humour comes with these parodies and with R and Julia trying to mimic each other to pass unnoticed amongst their own kind.




Marion's explanation for the plague and its solution is revealed as the way we live, ignoring the beauty and love around us and focussing on negativity, greed and hatred. Some might find this a bit too sentimental, but then these might be the dried up husks of the future...



 Warm Bodies film website

The Film

Given my avoidance of zombie films after 28 Days Later still has me planning how I might escape a zombie plague, I found Warm Bodies heavily sanitised. Much of the darker elements have been removed to make more of a rom-com, so for example, the capture of humans for attack training and the gruesome death of Juliet's father are missing and replaced with a rather Disney ending of happily ever after.


The fleshing out of life in both camps is reduced, which is a shame. There is no drunken R reverting to zombie through intoxication, groaning and infecting a guard after being discovered.
There were a few nice touches - the nod to 28 Days Later and when R wishes he was human again when people used to take notice of what was around them - flashback to people walking around ignoring each other with earbuds and electronic devices just like zombies.
There is also a rather heavy handed pastiche of Shakespeare's balcony scene, which caused quite a few whispers around the cinema of dawning realisation - oh, its Romeo and Juliet...
I did think that the message of kindness and acceptance was cleverly put across at the end and gave me a warm feeling inside, so hug a zombie today!

If you enjoyed the film, try Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland
If you enjoyed the book, try the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer or World War Z by Max Brooks