Movie Review: "Warm Bodies" ***

Ah Valentine's day. That one time of the year when, single or not, I would rather stay indoors in my sweats and watch my pirated episodes of Friends and Will and Grace before spending the next 12 hours watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Is it bitterness? Maybe. I think it's because I have a threshold for sappiness. You will be correct in arguing that I am a sap at heart. But again, threshold. However, I seem to lend little support to this contention by the fact that I'm wearing red right now.

Moving back to what this post was all about before I got sidetracked, let me talk about Warm Bodies.  If you're the type who believes in celebrating V day by going out of the comforts of your home, whether by yourself, with your friends or with your lucky special someone, then Warm Bodies is for you. It might be hard to drag your dates to these movie given that zombies nowadays are the Beyoncé of the undead. They're simply overexposed. If you've spent the past months trying not to have a heart attack and obsessing over The Walking Dead, why would you want to watch another zombie movie?

Because this one isn't so bad. For the most part, Warm Bodies is actually good.
The movie begins from the perspective of the zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult), who remembers nothing of his past life.   As a zombie, R is frustrated. He walks really slow, is unable to say anything, and communicates with his zombie "best friend" through grunts and moans. He doesn't sleep or dream and sometimes wishes he could. He also listens to music inside an abandoned airplane. Thus we find traces of humanity left in R.  And yes, R is played by the kid in  About a Boy alongside Hugh Grant. If you remember that, then you must be feeling as old as I am now. Hault has the pale but handsome look to pull off the role of the brain-eating but sensitive R. Maybe he could also play a vampire in one of those Twilight movies.

The zombies co-exist with with "the bonies" and the remaining humans who have walled themselves up in the city. In this movie, it is necessary that the we root for the zombies, even as they eat the brains of their victims and creepily share their memories, thus the addition of the bonies, who play the role of the real bad guys. Apparently, at some point in their zombie life, they become so dead that they start removing the remaining skin and flesh and become the bonies. Then there are the humans, who go around killing zombies and bonies alike.

Things get complicated when R meets Julie, a human, whose boyfriend gets eaten by R. What happens next shouldn't be a real surprise given the bad editing of the trailer we've seen months before. R and Julie form a bond. He brings her food and protects her from his fellow zombies by teaching her to walk like them. Little by little, words come to R and he feels a heart beat. Love is changing the zombies and curing them of the plague that started it all. Not very subtly, the film explores the question of what it means to be truly human and what it means to be dead, over and over, to the point that it becomes annoying. Still, the chemistry between R and Julie is undeniable and R's point of view and observation on zombie life is funny and refreshing enough for one to remain entertained.