Warm Bodies: Wait For It, Wait for It…

The film adaptation of the critically acclaimed novel, Warm Bodies shuffled its way into wide release this weekend after a successful film festival run. The movie combines rom-com with horror, in a “Twilight with zombies” mash-up that has its moments (including quite a few allusions to Romeo & Juliet) but doesn’t really get its rotten footing until the latter half of the second act.

“R” (Nicholas Hoult), a zombie with feelings, is pursuing the still alive Julie (Teresa Palmer) after eating her boyfriend Perry’s (Dave Franco) brains and falling in love with the idea of a life with her. R hides Julie in a pack of zombies, and eventually helps her to escape back to her own “living” people while avoiding the skinless “Bonies” and a roving militia lead by Julie’s father Grigio (John Malkovich); all the while becoming more and more human each day with his now awakened heart beating.

The film gets off to a slow start, having to spend several sequences developing R’s backstory and relationship to other zombies, as well as introducing us to the premise of a zombie with human emotions. For the first three or four sequences R tells most of his story through voiceover, which slows the pace and makes it difficult for the interspersed comedy to land. As a result the movie wasn’t a true comedy, more of a whimsical drama. If not for the comedic timing of Rob Corddry as zombie best friend “M,” and a few occasional humorous glares and grunts from Hoult, the movie would have been laugh free.

With so much set-up necessary to introduce us to the couple, the storytelling takes on a choppy aspect. There isn’t a sense of time or space until the second half of Act Two when the relationships and mood had all been established and the story became more “traditionally” structured. This isn’t to bash the film for breaking away from the standard three-act structure (which it didn’t, it merely spent a lengthy amount of time in Act One), but the film was neither overly structured nor ambitious. It was more of a brain smoothie garnished with plot holes here and there. For example, Julie’s immediate acceptance of R’s consumption of Perry’s brain was a little far fetched even given the explanation that she was “used to people dying.”

By the time the movie got on track in the Second Act I was pleasantly surprised by the humor and storytelling, as if the original screenwriter had his brain eaten half-way through writing and the new super zombie story writer took over and cut out all the “plot” explanation and just told a story. Suddenly, R and Julie’s relationship made sense, the world was believable, and the interactions became quick, snappy, and action packed.

Viewed under the correct circumstances the movie could be a fun watch for fans of the growing rom-horror genre, but for me the film didn’t take the brain and run with it. What probably should have been a two and a half hour dramedy based on Act One was crammed into a 97 minute rom-com that rushed to a conclusion just as the movie got interesting. Warm Bodies takes so long to get into that you might as well just read the book.