'Warm Bodies' Lives Up to Name: Will Warm Your Cold, Dead Heart

We had the chance to check out the rom-com-zom flick "Warm Bodies" a couple of weekends ago. (Also, we bet Edgar Wright would never have imagined "rom-zom-com" as a term to be used on the regular.) As regular readers of this blog may have surmised, we love horror movies, tv, graphic novels, books, etcetera. We particularly love when genres mix together in wonderful, unexpected ways. 

Needless to say, we loved "Warm Bodies". We also discovered a pretty unique Canadian connection to the film. Intrigued? Click the cut to find out more. (Spoilers!)


So, "Warm Bodies" is basically Romeo and Juliet, with a little undead twist. But trust us, what could have ended up like this instead became an oddly endearing and rather charming little love story.

The wonderful Nicholas Hoult (yes, the weird little boy from "About A Boy") plays R, our undead hero. While R looks a little grey around the edges, he's remarkably self aware for someone with no vital signs. He narrates the film in deadpan style, filling the audience in on this brave new world and his growing dissatisfaction at being a zombie. Teresa Palmer is Julie, the human love interest, who R "meets" in a kind of unorthodox way...

A zombie plague has taken over the world, with a few survivors holed up in a walled complex led by John Malkovich (RIGHT?) Every once and a while the humans have to make a run out to the deserted city to get food and supplies. And every once and a while, someone gets eaten.

As post-apocalyptic luck would have it, the person who gets eaten is Julie's boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco, whom we LOVE.) R is doing the eating, snacking on Perry's delicious brains while simultaneously falling head over heels in love (or something?) with Julie. He's smitten. And he's dead.

We won't get into any nitty-gritty plot details, but the way their relationship evolves is really fun to watch. Rob Corddry is great as M, R's zombie best friend who also begins to feel the effects of R and Julie's growing closeness.

Music also plays a huge role in the film, as it acts as R's primary means of communication with Julie before he "warms up" enough (sorry, sorry) to start talking. But also, this film just has a phenomenal soundtrack.

Oh, and that Canadian connection we were talking about? Yeah, these zombies are pretty agile, as far as the undead go. They aren't full tilt "28 Days Later" sprinters, but neither are they your classic "Night of the Living Dead" shamblers. R can run, albeit awkwardly, and can even operate simple mechanisms, to a degree.

As for the film's Canadian connection? Well, the movie was filmed in Montreal, and as it turns out, a lot of the cast was trained by the Cirque du Soleil on how to act "zombie-ish" (which apparently involved making one's body very "heavy", followed with a lot of "uncoordinated wallowing".) Ah Canada, such a beacon for l'art du cadavre.

Final Verdict: Charming, hilarious, and thoroughly entertaining. A!