Warm Bodies

Ratings: 7.8/10

Film Class: B

Genre: Horror-less Zomance Comedy

R is a zombie who falls in love with a human, Julie (Teresa Palmer). Gradually, he, or it starts to feel a heartbeat, and forms a relationship which could make him human again. This infectious miracle promises a change in a world highly populated with the undead...

Most of what you see in the trailer already shows the best bits of the movie; the novel plot, the funny scenes, thus making the predictability of the plot like an open book. Still, the humorous narration by the lead zombie injected a warm hearted mood into the "lifeless" movie.

I didn't know the lead actress was Teresa Palmer, who reminded us (my wife and I whom I watched the movie with) of a blonde version of Kristen Stewart. I was blown away by her gorgeousness when I first saw her in Bedtime Stories, then still a fairly unknown actress, but somehow didn't quite recognise her in this movie. Most of the time, her wardrobe was a rugged, beatup state which made her slightly less attractive than how I had remembered her to be.

*major spoilers ahead* I love how there's a subtlety about the lead character's names, made obvious only at the point where R went into the quarantine zone to look for Julie, to find her getting some fresh air at her balcony. The scene was reminiscing of the classic Romeo and Juliet balcony rendezvous, how cheekily cute. His actual name was probably Romy, Romeous or something like that.

The part where zombies could relive the memories of a dead person by eating his/her brain was also a very interesting and well thought of possiblity, which opened up to more areas of plot development and expansion.

Overall, the movie triumphed in the details, well thought of "what-if-I-were-a-zombie" scenarios. All the way from how the Bonies evolved (further manifested from a zombie) to the "chance" zombie-remedy because R is a collector of items, everything just seemed to fit right in place. Even the makeup transformation of R from a zombie to a more human-like figure (mostly facial) also didn't go unnoticed. It's mostly funny, a few scenes to make you jump up in your seats but none too graphically haunting.

Orginal zombie jokes with an original zombie plot, add some zombie romance into it and what do you get? A revolutionary genre, an infectious miracle which promises a change in filmography.

Ps.: It's trivia-ly funny that even the movie poster is intentionally made to look like an unrolled crumpled up poster... Apocalyptic-like...