Warm Bodies (Film Reflection)

“We smile, because this is how we save the world.”
― Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

I am a genuine zombie geek. I love all things zombie. I'll admit that I feel a zombie apocalypse is a legit potential in the future. We don't know what kind of crazy stuff people are making and testing and all that. I'm not saying something in my lifetime would happen, but it's one of those "horror" themes that has the potential to be seriously a reality.

When I was doing research on the character of nuns in European cinema, I watched a lot of exploitation

films, which included a great deal of zombies. Fulci anyone? I even saw zombies against sharks! I'm not saying I've seen every zombie film ever made, but I've seen a decent amount of them and I am always fascinated by them in a super geek way. My eyes light up and I feel super geeky. So clearly I had to see Warm Bodies.

But as my life has dictated, going TO to the movies is a rarity. I used to frequent the movies all the time, but having a toddler and limited child care makes it difficult to get out of the house. So I get to watch movies mostly when the come to my local RedBox or, when I just don't trust myself to get to the RedBox and return it, OnDemand. I had been waiting and watching for this one to come to RedBox so that I could finally add to my background knowledge in zombies. I mean, come on. . . it's trending like crazy in our current cultural climate!

The draw of the film as a romantic comedy was endearing. Plus it offered some new zombie tidbits. One, these zombies get memories from eating the brains of other people. The zombies also become these super creepy skeleton creatures once they've been a zombie for too long. Yet, the zombies seem to somehow communicate and this film offers an option for curing the problem.

The interesting thing was that this movie is so wonderfully stand alone. It's not like it was referencing zombie films left and right or drawing attention to specific parodies (ala Shawn of the Dead). It creates its own origin story to be referenced or parodied. (As I write this, Julie walks out onto the balcony and my thoughts about the origin story are immediately shattered, because it all goes back to Shakespeare... how ironic!) And that origin story, sadly, though, lies in the heart of the Romeo and Juliet story, brought full circle in the balcony scene. Romeo & Juliet & Zombies. . .

Luckily, it is not a tragedy and it has some great hilarious scenes. This movie had tons of amazing moments. For example, slow motion large group walking to classic 80's rock is always a winner for me! There is also the initial romancing of R for Julie. The comedy was driven along by Rob Corddry, but it made alot of the story more meaningful, because they represented a hope for the usually hopeless story! Corddry was M (Mercutio) and was extremely sarcastic and had lots of fun quips. The casting is what made his character. I'm not a super huge Corddry fan, but he has his roles that I adore. This is definitely one of them.

The film was also based on a book by Isaac Marion and I an incredibly intrigued. I want to read the books, but they don't currently fit into my geekology challenge this summer. I have noted them and I am eagerly awaiting being able to pick them up. It is supposedly a trilogy. 

This was a great addition to the cannon of zombie films, as well as the cannon of Shakespeare inspired stories.  It is an adorably romantic nerd flick and I would recommend it, if not to just add to your own zombie knowledge for when our own zombie apocalypse does hit. Just don't forget. . .