Review: Warm Bodies

Jonathan Levine delivered one of the most hard hitting, gut-wrenching "dramedy" in 2011. The film had wonderful performances from the cast, peppered with an amazing soundtrack and cinematography. 50/50 is one of my favorite "dramedies" of all time. So is Levine able to do the same magic on this film? Read on below.

Synopsis:

A funny new twist on a classic love story, WARM BODIES is a poignant tale about the power of human connection. After a zombie epidemic, R (a highly unusual zombie) encounters Julie (a human survivor), and rescues her from a zombie attack. Julie sees that R is different from the other zombies, and as the two form a special relationship in their struggle for survival, R becomes increasingly more human - setting off an exciting, romantic, and often comical chain of events that begins to transform the other zombies and maybe even the whole lifeless world. (c) Summit

Story:
As seen from the synopsis above it's a tale about a Zombie that falls in love with a human. Sounds familiar? Yes it sounds a bit like 'Twilight' but I can tell you that this one is very different from that. The story in this movie makes sense because it was told a lot better and the sub-plot made sense and it was resolved quickly and if it was not resolved early on in the movie, it's because they are somewhat saving it up to be solved in the end.

Acting:
Nicholas Hoult puts on a wonderful performance, he was a convincing zombie (a zombie who cares for that matter) and the way he portrayed the zombie's slow transformation to being human, he was handled pretty well. Next is the leading lady, Teresa Palmer, she also played the character well and she is not the usual damsel in distress as she can definitely hold her own (unlike someone). The chemistry between these lead characters is really believable and that is a big thanks to the performance of Hoult and Palmer. They made me believe that the love between the living and the undead is possible (although highly ridiculous). Moving on to the others, even though some of them gave a good performance especially Rob Corddry and John Malkovich their characters were unfortunately underdeveloped. So whenever they appear on screen I feel delighted.

Music:
50/50 had one of the most memorable soundtracks and this movie also delivered that. To some the music might give nostalgia but to me it helped the scenes to have more depth and the music also feels like it was a necessity to have in the movie because I think if the music was not present the movie might feel a little shallow and a little bland.

Cinematography:
The cinematography here was pretty average, not great but not bad either. I liked the shots where they show how many the zombies really are. That's pretty much what I have to say here.

Direction:
Jonathan Levine made this film as fast paced as possible, and it was good. The first to third-half of the movie was great, none of them were dragging although at time it feels a little rushed. Levine gave a great effort in making this movie.

Overall:
This is not your usual zombie flick, there's little blood but there's a lot of heart. The performances was good enough, the humor in this movie is pretty good but most of all the romance in this movie is much more realistic than recent rom-coms we have today. I give this a 4/5