Warm Bodies (film)
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Warm Bodies
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Directed
by
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Produced
by
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David
Hoberman
Todd Lieberman Bruna Papandrea |
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Studio
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Distributed
by
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Release date(s)
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Running
time
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97 minutes
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Country
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United
States
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Language
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English
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Warm Bodies is a 2013 American paranormal romantic zombie
comedy film based on Isaac Marion's novel of
the same name. Directed and written by Jonathan
Levine the film stars Nicholas
Hoult and Teresa
Palmer.
The film focuses on the
development of the relationship between Julie, a young woman, and
"R", a zombie, and how their eventual romance develops throughout.
The film is noted for displaying human characteristics in zombie characters,
and for being told from a zombie's perspective.
R is a young man with an existential crisis–he is a
zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and
the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than
blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life
is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, noidentity, and no
pulse, but he has dreams.
After experiencing a teenage boy’s memories while
consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward,
and strangely sweet relationship with the victim’s human girlfriend. Julie is a
blast of color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that surrounds R. His
decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and
perhaps their whole lifeless world.
Scary, funny, and surprisingly poignant, Warm
Bodies is about being alive, being dead, and the blurry line in between.
Plot
After a zombie
apocalypse, R, a zombie, spends his days wandering around an airport which is now
filled with hordes of his fellow undead, including his best friend M. R and M
achieve rudimentary communication with grunts and moans and "Eh's"
and occasional near-words. As a zombie, R constantly craves human flesh,
especially brains, as he is able to "feel alive" on the memories of
their former owners. The zombies travel in packs, moving very slowly, searching
for victims to feed on. While out looking for food, R and a pack of zombies
find Julie Grigio and a group of her friends, who were sent out by Julie's
father from a heavily-fortified, walled-off human enclave in a nearby city to
recover medical supplies from abandoned buildings. R sees Julie and is drawn to
her. After being shot in the chest by Julie's boyfriend, Perry, R kills Perry
while Julie is distracted and eats his brain, giving R his thoughts and
memories making his attraction to Julie become even stronger. He rescues Julie
from the rest of the pack and takes her back to an airplane he lives in at the
airport to keep her safe. The two bond, causing R to slowly begin to come to
life.[9]
Eventually, Julie gets restless
and convinces R to take her home. On the way, R reveals to her that he killed
Perry, causing her to abandon R and return alone to the human enclave. R begins
to make his way back to the airport, heartbroken, but when he sees that M and
other zombies are also beginning to show signs of life, he and M lead a group
to the human enclave, where R sneaks inside the wall. There he meets Julie's
friend Nora and her father Colonel Grigio, leader of the human group. While Nora
is grudgingly accepting, Colonel Grigio refuses to believe corpses can change
and threatens to kill R. Julie and R escape to a baseball stadium where the
rest of R's group is waiting, but find themselves under attack by a horde of
skeletal zombies (also known as Boneys) who have irretrievably lost all traces
of humanity, and are set on killing and eating anything with a heartbeat, which
now includes R and his friends.
Julie and R run from the Boneys,
finding themselves trapped. Taking the only escape route, R jumps with Julie
into a pool far below, shielding her from the impact, and both of them survive
the fall. Thrilled to be alive, they kiss passionately. However, Colonel Grigio
shoots R in the shoulder, causing him to bleed and proving that he has become
human again. The humans and zombies combine forces and kill the Boneys, and the
zombies slowly assimilate into human society. The human population destroys the
walls surrounding the human society after the annihilation of the Boney
population, creating a life for both humans and reanimated corpses much like
the days before the apocalypse. The film ends with now-human R and Julie
overlooking the city. Julie tells R to rename himself, but he decides to keep
his name R, content with his new life.
Cast
- Nicholas Hoult as R
- Teresa Palmer as Julie Grigio
- Rob Corddry as M / Marcus
- Dave Franco as Perry Kelvin
- Analeigh Tipton as Nora
- Cory Hardrict as Kevin
- John Malkovich as Colonel Grigio
- Patrick Sabongui as Hunting zombie
- Tod Fennell as Armed Patrol
- Justin Bradley (uncredited)
Production
Nicholas Hoult as R.
Actor Nicholas Hoult plays the zombie R in the feature film, written and directed by Jonathan Levine. The film also starred Teresa
Palmer as Julie Grigio, Rob
Corddry as M, and John
Malkovich as General Grigio. Dave
Franco, Analeigh
Tipton, and Cory
Hardrict also appear.
The studio Summit
Entertainment backed the film, which was produced by Bruna Papanadrea, David Hoberman, and Todd Lieberman and executive produced by Laurie Webb and Cori
Shepherd Stern. The zombies can barely talk in the film, so extensive voice-overs were used to express their thoughts.
Levine said even though this is a
love story that involves zombies, he hoped people wouldn't try to put the film
into one category and zombie enthusiasts would be open to a new twist on the
genre. "I think this movie takes the mythology in a different direction,
and I think there is a lot there for die-hard zombie fans," he explained.
"We're encouraging people to be open-minded, because it does take some
liberties with the mythology, but at the same time, it's very grounded in the
science of zombie-ism and uses that as a springboard for a more fantastical
story. It may be divisive, but I think there's a lot there for zombie fans if
they're open-minded to a new take on it, and I hope they can.Actress Palmer
said, "For me, the core of the story is that love breeds life back into
people. That human connection saves us. People who have had those lights dimmed
inside them, when they fall in love they get brighter.
Warm Bodies began shooting in Montréal,
Québec, Canada in September
2011, and was released in the U.S. on February 1, 2013.
Levine told USA Today that R attempts "to do a lot of things to varying degrees of success.
Driving, for instance. Let's just say his hand-eye coordination is not what it
needs to be. Hoult and other zombie actors practiced with circus performers to achieve
the right body moves. Hoult explained, "There were some days with the Cirque du Soleil people and we would take our shoes off in a dance studio and we would kind
of grow out of the wall and make our bodies feel very heavy. It's one of those
things where you think about it a lot but you just have to try it out and see
what works. Then Jonathan [Levine] would say either 'too much or little less',
we didn't want to go over the top with it. Hoult told another reviewer that he
"he drew a lot of his inspiration from Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands," saying
he thought of that movie "as a zombie film, whether it was or not. Because
you had to feel sorry for Edward... I was thinking of Edward when I did R.
Release
Warm Bodies was released on January 31, 2013 in the Philippines, Greece, and Russia. It was released on February 1,
2013 in the United States, on February 7, 2013 in Italy and on February 8, 2013
in the United Kingdom.
Critical
reception
The film has received mixed to
positive reviews from critics. It holds a 78% certified "fresh"
rating on Rotten
Tomatoes based on 136 reviews, with an average score of 6.6/10. The sites consensus
reads: "It may not take full advantage of its quirky, possibility-rich
premise, but Warm Bodies offers a sweet, well-acted spin on a genre that
all too often lives down to its brain-dead protagonists.It holds a Metacritic score of 58 out of 100, based on 37 reviews, indicating "mixed to
average" reviews.
Richard Lawson of Slant Magazine said "The ubiquity of Shakespeare's original template allows Warm Bodies
some leeway in terms of believability, where otherwise it sometimes strains
against its own logic. But the film's persistent charm encourages us to look
past a few festering surface wounds and see the human heart beating inside,
which is really what love is all about." and awarded the film 3 out of 4
stars. Richard
Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times deemed the film "a
well-paced, nicely directed, post-apocalyptic love story with a terrific sense
of humor and the, um, guts to be unabashedly romantic and unapologetically
optimistic." He added that the movie "isn't perfect. It's a shame
those Bonies are mediocre special-effects creations that run with a herky-jerky
style... But those are minor drawbacks... Mary Pols of TIME called it "an inventive charmer that visits all the typical movie
scenarios of young love amid chaos and disaster... There are so many clever
lines and bits of physical comedy worth revisiting that the movie seems like a
likely cult
classic.
Digital
Spy gave it 3 out of 5 stars and called it "a truly deadpan romantic comedy" and
"a witty reinvention of the genre like Shaun of
the Dead before it, drawing parallels between the apathy of youth and the zombie
masses," adding, "Hoult gets to deliver a wickedly dry voiceover.
Chris Packham of The Village Voice said in a negative review that
"The film's intentions are way too good for its own good, producing
bloodless romance and more shamefully bloodless carnage. Nobody kisses anyone
else until it becomes clear that both parties have pulses, and everyone gets to
keep all their limbs. Michael O'Sullivan said in his 1 and a half star review
for The Washington Post that the film is "Cute
without being especially clever, it's as pallid and as brain-dead as its zombie
antihero...It’s less funny and self-aware than “Shawn of the Dead,” less
swooningly romantic than “Twilight” and less scary than pretty much anything
else out there with zombies in it."
From : Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia, Warm Bodies A Novel by Isaac Marion
