"Warm Bodies" Movie Review: Zombies for Everyone

For whatever reason, zombie culture has been growing exponentially in popularity in the past few years. I assume this phenomena stems from the media targeting the teen and young adult audiences — those of us I like to call “the Harry Potter Generation.” We’ve been reading about mythical and supernatural creatures since we were in grade school, and it seems that visual media (movies, television, and video games) took advantage of this appeal around the time we were starting high school. After the successes of series like Harry Potter, Twilight, and Percy Jackson, Hollywood seemily began to move away from the “realistic” high school stories (for instance, the wildly popular Mean Girls that was so fetch in 2004) and instead started to rely on fantastical elements to hook viewers. Possibly the most thriving of these elements is the zombie, which has made the leap from strictly horror film appearances to the most popular television shows, highest earning movies, and even cartoons (think Adventure Time, etc.).

In a recent spurt of move-going, I went with a friend to see Warm Bodies, one of the newest productions in the zombie apocalypse genre. Being of sound mind and below average fear tolerance, I’ve never been one for horror films, but if I ever had the opportunity to offer a warm handshake to the person who combined zombies and romantic comedy, I would take that opportunity with pleasure. Of what I have experienced, Warm Bodies steps just outside the zombie culture we’ve come to know so well without losing the fear and gore associated with the genre. By presenting the characters in a comical light through a sarcastic, possibly teenage narrator who thinks like a human but speaks just a touch more clearly than the average undead, those responsible for this film have made the zombie craze accessible to even those of us who cannot handle the likes of The Walking Dead. They offer us cringe-worthy moments from the beginning of the film, but base the motion of the plot around a story of forbidden love (not everyone catches the Romeo and Juliet references, but it’s a love story nonetheless, with a better ending, I may add) with the undertones of an action/adventure story. Finding the perfect medium between 10 Things I Hate About You and I Am Legend must have been a pretty big chore, but Warm Bodies definitely wins my seal of approval.

Hollywood wants more than ever to give us what we want to see, or maybe it’s just capitalism. Either way, I’m confident to say that the fantasy craze will not be dead for quite a while. Whatever creature you are most interested in, I’m sure there will be a modern take on it in the near future. I’m pulling for a romantic comedy about a guy who meets a girl online and fools her into thinking he’s a human, when really, he’s got the body of a horse. There’s a lot of potential out there.