Movie Review: Warm Bodies

This past Saturday my wife and I took my teenage sister to see Warm Bodies.

One thing I like about my sister is that she's not annoying like other teenage girls are. At least not to me. She seems to have her head on straight. Well . . . other than the weird piercing she got. It's behind her lip at the top of her mouth. Look like it hurt. She said it didn't. Guess I'll take her word for it. 

First off I want to start by saying that Warm Bodies has a wonderful soundtrack. There's a nice mix of throwbacks and moderns on the album. I'm listening to it on Spotify and my ears are pleased. Check it out, yo.

On to the review.

What I Liked

The overall execution of the movie was well done. I like that they took a Rom-Com, and that genre's tropes, and mashed it together with a post apocalyptic zombie movie. 

If you're going to see this movie take into consideration that it's not going to watch like an episode of The Walking Dead. There were parts of it that I enjoyed more than The Walking Dead. I think at this point TWD has become a parody of itself. Getting rid of Frank Darabont caused a serious drop off for the show. Anyway, that's another blog post.

The use of monologue in this movie is probably the best you're going to see since The Shawshank Redemption. I liked getting inside the zombie's head, knowing what he was thinking, and what he was feeling with every twist and turn of the plot.

That brings me to another point. The movie plays with zombies in a way that I haven't seen other movies or stories take on the living dead. Can they think? Do they imagine? Do they evolve? Warm Bodies takes on those questions and puts their interesting spin on the zombie tropes. I'm not going to spoil the movie so you'll need to go check it out for yourself.

What I Didn't Like

The special effects department in this movie was pretty low budget. It's pretty obvious that the zombies are wearing makeup, and the CGI looks like something off of ABC Family. Honestly, you can overlook that. The story is strong enough that the special effects aren't that big a deal. However if you're hoping for zombies that looks as awesome as they did in Zombieland, or like they do in The Walking Dead, you're not going to get that.

The third act of the movie falls sort of flat. The first two acts of the movie are strong and set a high bar for the ending and I just didn't think they achieved what they could have. Of course there's going to be a happy ending. The zombies are going to be cured and the boy is going to get the girl. That's obvious from the first act. I just wasn't satisfied with the way things turned out.

Which brings me to this, I had to suspend my disbelief for a good amount of the movie. With any sort of fantasy movie it's going to take a little bit of you suspending your disbelief. But this girls spends days with a zombie and isn't repulsed by his smell? They do address this but not as well as they could have.

Outside of your main characters I don't think the secondary cast was developed that well. Your female lead was pretty shallow from beginning to end. The true transformation of the movie is the zombie. For me, I guess that's good enough. That is what the movie is about. Love causing the walking dead to be made alive. 

My last gripe is with John Malkovich. The guy is one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood, and usually does something outside the box. This role just didn't do it for me. He got on my nerves. He was your normal over the top, totalitarian, zombie killing leader. Meh. Been there. Done that. Maybe he needed more screen time. I don't know. His character was grossly underdeveloped and his resolution left me wanting. I blame it on the writers.

Should You See It

It sounds like I didn't like this movie. I did. In fact, I give it a solid B+. What they do with zombie tropes and a love story make this movie worth a matinee, and at the worst a Red Box rental. 

If you're looking for something to do this weekend go check Warm Bodies out.