Review of Warm Bodies (2013) by Nostalgic9Tails — 15 Jul 2013

First off, I didn't read the book, which is why I gave this movie a two (If I would have read the book, it probably would have dropped to a zero).

To begin with, I adore the lore of zombies; the fact that a strain of something can turn anyone into a slobbering, stumbling husk of a human has always fascinated me. This film, however, fails to add anything new or exciting to the zombie lore/genre. The gaining of the emotions, memories, and thoughts of the victim's brain felt contrived and convoluted; just the fact that these zombies get such a euphoric rush from eating brains would have been enough. Now, this might just be a pet peeve of mine when it comes to these types of movies but, how exactly did this all happen? It's shown that if a zombie doesn't eat the brains of a human, said human turns into a zombie. So, this would suggest that the 'virus' spread from parental transmission, or biting, which is odd due to how slow it would spread through a population. Would you stand next to someone who's very aggressive and nonsensical?

Furthermore, the characters felt very flat and it felt that the 'zombies' were just thrown in there for a cheap gimmick. It's basically, as most people and critics have said, Romeo and Juliet with zombies. This wouldn't be so bad if we'd get more exposition about the main character and supporting characters. We spend a total of about five minutes with Perry (the soon to be zombie dinner) and his girlfriend/lover, Julie. Both felt very two-dimensional and it was obvious that the actors had little chemistry on screen, though how can you blame them with such bad source material?

Moving on, the zombies themselves. These 'zombies' are apparently not the only un-dead thing looking for flesh and brains. They're in competition with the 'bonies' which look more like Ghouls from Fallout. Apparently, regular zombies all eventually end up as 'bonies' due to them losing hope and faith? What kind of sense does that make? They're supposed to be ZOMBIES, not pre-teenaged girls. A disease is a bit more complex and it spreading faster usually doesn't correlate with one losing 'hope' over it. How fast it spreads varies from person to person and besides, they've already lost their humanity to this disease/virus, what is there to lose hope over?

The 'bonies' themselves are unimpressive and aren't too consistent with how they were built up to be. Later on in the movie, Julie's father says that the 'bonies' are very fast and are very dangerous which is unlike anything they've ever seen. Though, during the scene where R and Julie are running away from the 'bonies', R trips and Julie fires two shots into the bonie that was about to pounce on R which kills it instantly. She didn't even aim for the head and it dropped after two shots. So, why is her father and the rest of the 'city' freaking out over these things? They've got Humvees with fifty-cal turrets, adding to that, a wall that splits their settlement from the outside.

As for Julie's father? He was a dumbass and a piss poor representation of someone stuck in their ways. For example, when R is shown to him and tries to communicate, why didn't he blow R's brains out right there? I'm all for turning someone who's stubborn but still, he could have acted a bit more in-character with his archetype.

Next, the fact that the zombies were even able to turn back into humans 'through the power of love' is a horribly executed cliche' of old Disney films with a dark twist. You cannot just simply wish for someone to get a beating heart again just because they or you love hard enough. Also, where did all the blood even go when they became zombies in the first place? It shows that their hearts can return to beating and when they 'come back to life', they bleed when shot. It takes a lot longer than a few seconds for blood to return to a body, and if it's not circulating it dries out. So what is the heart pumping?

Also, perhaps it was explained in the book, but where exactly did this all take place? We see that it's a big city, but it also has agriculture right in the middle of the streets. I understand this was done in order to survive in such a small area of land, but how can you have agriculture IN A CITY ENVIRONMENT? You need a LOT more than a bit of grass and hay to raise the several goats and cows shown in the film. And where are they getting the patches of grass and bales of hay exactly? How far has this strain gone in 8 years time? From what's implied, it's wiped out most of civilization, but apparently not the areas vital for growing crops and selling it to small bunkers that somehow avoided infection.

I'm almost out of characters, so I'm wrapping this up. The film was bad, it was lacking the essential information needed to know what's going on. The characters were bland and inconsistent, and the lore of zombies was done just as well as the lore of vampires was done in Twilight.