Riding the hype surrounding the Mayan apocalypse of 2012, “Warm Bodies” attempts to exploit society’s newfound obsession with a zombie doomsday.
While the “Twilight” series may be over, “Warm Bodies” continues in the same mold, telling the forbidden love story between a human and a nonhuman.
Instead of a dreamy vampire, however, it’s a dreamy zombie (or dreamy compared to the rest of the undead).
“Warm Bodies,” rated PG-13, depicts the world years after the apocalypse.
The movie follows a maverick zombie named R—played by Nicholas Hoult—as he moans and shuffles from place to place, eating human flesh.
Although R follows the zombie way of life, he hasn’t fully embraced his nonliving existence.
He may not have the ability to feel or to remember his full name, but he’s able to sarcastically and somewhat humorously narrate how sluggish and slow he has become.
R and his undead friends reside at an airport, walking in packs to devour their human prey.
While there’s no explanation for why they choose to inhabit an airport, the post-apocalyptic view of a destroyed habitation is very realistic. This is where any type of realism or logic ends.
As the zombies leave the airport in search of more food, a group of living people attempts to search for supplies at the airport.
There, R meets Julia—played by Teresa Palmer, a blonde Kristen Stewart look-alike—who is the daughter of the man in charge of killing corpses that threaten the living.
While R is eating Julia’s boyfriend Perry, he starts to gain Perry’s memory—which includes everything about Julia—making him fall for her immediately.
Romantically enough, this makes R not want to eat her brains. Nothing screams “boyfriend material” more than that.
Taking her back to his apartment—a jumbo jet in the airport—R wants to keep Julia safe from other infected zombies trying to dine on her flesh.
Though she is skeptical of R’s advances, it doesn’t take long for her to trust R and completely forget about her recently-eaten boyfriend.
As R’s zombie friends somehow don’t manage to discover Julia, the two bond by dancing together to his incredible collection of vintage albums and going on joy rides in an abandoned BMW.
Even when zombie neighbors eventually realize that Julia is fresh meat, they look past it when they see the odd couple holding hands. All the while, R is becoming more attractive and mobile with no explanation.
The movie continues with random conflict as the humans and zombies have to join forces to defeat the “bonies,” a type of super-zombie whose body solely consists of a skeleton form.
Combining the horror, romance and action genres does not make this film dynamic. Instead, the movie is confusing, ridiculous and altogether too much.
“Warm Bodies” unfolds as a less intelligent version of “Twilight,” replacing vampires with zombies.
Although the plot of “Warm Bodies” is ingenious compared to other romantic movies coming out for Valentine’s Day, it fails to be consistent and is incomprehensible.
