"Warm Bodies" Movie Review (2013) (SPOILERS)

Last Saturday, I finally saw the film Warm Bodies, the teen zombie romance based on the book I reviewed awhile back. Here's my review.

The Good

The stuff that happens after R.'s zombie group attacks Julie's team and especially after R. infiltrates the walled-off portion of the city still controlled by humans is extremely entertaining. I was actually concerned for the characters, which isn't something that happens very often. That half of the movie is also where the funniest jokes were, including Julie and her friend Norah giving R. a makeover so he doesn't seem so pallid and, well, dead.

There's a good bit of social satire, which is more clear in the film than in the book. In the beginning, R. is reminiscing about the days before the zombie apocalypse and how people were able to have real conversations (unlike the zombies, who just grunt a lot). He then has a flashback to everybody walking around on their smart-phones, not actually talking to anybody. We also get the origin of the "boneys," the most corpse-like and inhuman of the zombies. The book hints that people turning into zombies was the result of a lack of human communication and connection and this scene gets it across.

The film also cuts some aspects of the book that I didn't particularly enjoy, like R. having a "zombie wife" and "zombie children" that needed to be trained to hunt humans or R.'s zombie wife "cheating" on him. That slowed down the book and I'm glad they got rid of it.

I like how the movie version spared Julie's father, the human general and apparent ruler of the human enclave. In the book he and one of the "boneys" kill each other just as the zombies start turning human again en masse. I think that's supposed to be symbolic about how he's gotten so overzealous that he, like the "boneys," has become unable to adapt. In the movie, he's a lot more reasonable and even has a really amusing line at the end.

The ending is also clever. The revived zombies are reintegrated into human society by simple expedient of them and the humans teaming up to obliterate the "boneys." The film ends with R. and Julie watching as the walls around the human enclave are dynamited. The symbolism of the walls between people coming down was really well-done.

The Bad

The early part of the movie before R.'s zombie group attacks Julie and her friends is rather dull and not particularly funny. That's not really a good thing for a comedy. That's my one major complaint and that's a pretty big one.

In the book, R. has conversations in his head with Perry, Julie's prior boyfriend who he killed and ate. We don't see any of that in the movie except for a single dream sequence. Although too much of that would have slowed the movie down, it could have been a good concept to explore.

The Verdict

Although it's good to encourage originality in movies, I'm glad I waited for the dollar theater. It was worth $2 to see, but not worth $12. 6.0 out of 10.

Book Review: "Warm Bodies" (NO SPOILERS)

Awhile back, I saw a trailer for the upcoming film Warm Bodies, based on Warm Bodies: A Novel by Isaac Marion. It looked amusing, so I decided to request the book from the library.

Although initially it might seem to be an attempt cash in on the paranormal romance craze started by  Twilight, it's not really a romance novel per se. There is a love story, but the story is more about a zombie named R. rediscovering his humanity than the romantic relationship.

One of the things I liked about it was its creativity. For starters, it gives the zombies something resembling a culture and community, which would explain why zombies in more traditional zombie media cooperate with one another to attack humans. It also differentiates between the different types of zombies, the "Fleshies" (the ones still resembling people) and the "Boneys" (ambulatory skeletons, who seem to operate as a leadership caste). It also explains why the zombies go for brains specifically, although I won't say why to avoid spoilers. That aspect of the story is played for comedy at one point, which I found amusing, and it also provides a major reason for why the events in the story actually take place.

The book also depicts a rather realistic survivor society in the unnamed city where the story takes place. The survivors have barricaded themselves into fortified compounds, the most prominent one being an old sports stadium. When I was in college, I took a course on the archaeology of Rome's provinces and I remember learning about an old Roman arena where a town grew up after the fall of the Western Empire. Although I don't remember clearly, I'm pretty sure it was the Arles Amphitheatre. A structure of that size would have the space to house a large number of people and would extremely defensible, with only a few ways in or out. The survivors in the stadium raid the surrounding city for supplies and build walls to connect the stadium to other fortified survivor enclaves, another clever defensive measure.

It's also a very quick read. I read through it in two sittings and it was never dull.

However interesting it is, though, it's not especially memorable. It's a fun book to get from the library, but I wouldn't buy it. 7 out of 10.