So here we are, once again Valentine's Day is upon us. And I still hate it. Single, depressed, and I'm running low on alcohol. Oh and before you ask, yes I have had a relationship since last February. It didn't end well. To be honest I was thinking of revising my top 15 saddest moments list from last year, but I ran out of time. Maybe next year.
No, instead here's 'Warm Bodies', a film (Based on a novel which I haven't read. I might now) concerning the romance between a human female and an undead male. Haven't heard of that before. Except 'Twilight'. Except 'Warm Bodies' does not ruin the zombie genre like 'Twilight' did for vampires and werewolves. Basically a zombie named R (Nicholas Holt) going about his everyday zombie business before coming across Julie (Teresa Palmer) during a zombie attack on some humans. R falls in love and effectively kidnaps Julie to keep her safe. However some of the more decomposed zombies, called boneys or skeletons, are a bit annoyed with this.
Now, firstly, does this film stick to the zombie mythos. Kind of, yeah. Believe me there are no zombies which sparkle in the daylight, far from it. I suppose the thing that first got me thinking was "R is thinking". R is a zombie, he should not be thinking. He should not be having a one word conversation with M (Rob Coddry), he should not know how to open airplane doors, he should not know what music is. However, we have no idea how long the zombie apocalypse has been going on for, so I'm guessing that we have entered the 'Land (of the Dead') era where the zombies are getting smarter; as we know in that film they use tools, form strategies and even have a form of communication.
That being said I have not watched a film which is told from the zombie's perspective. Oh I know of 'Colin', I just haven't seen it. So it is slightly weird to see a film from the flesh eating undead point of view, and it kind of works. We hear of the conflicts a zombie has against killing a human, we see how the zombies interact, we see the dangers they face, we see a more human side to them. Well, except for the boneys who haven't eaten flesh for so long they ate the flesh off themselves. Except for the eyes. I think I can see eyes in their skulls. Speaking of which the boneys are the only obvious CGI effects in this, but I don't actually mind them. Maybe it's because I don't tend to think about what muscles and bone look like under the skin so I really have no idea what a heavily decomposed corpse looks like.
The film actually does show what happens when a zombie eats the brain, as they apparently absorb memories and emotions, which is kind of weird but at the same time R says it makes them "feel alive" again, which, God forbid, was something that came up in 'Song of the Dead'. We see a minor conflict, does a zombie leave the brain so the victim becomes another zombie, or consume the brain and briefly feel something again. In one of my previous posts I did mention how zombies are stereotypically moaning for brains despite the fact that they don't tend to eat it since this would mean there won't be a zombie, this film actually provides a solution to that which is actually a pretty nice touch. That and it shows a pretty good scene where R is experiencing his victim's death at his (R) own hand.
In fact, that's one of the more interesting parts of the story, it's not whether R and Julie will survive, it's will R succumb to the hunger and attack Julie. There is an obvious downside though, which I will talk more about in the spoiler section. I'm not sure it is a spoiler since I do recall it being shown in the trailer, but I'll leave it till the spoiler section anyway. There is a 'Romeo and Juliet' approach to it, in fact the second I typed that I realised that Romeo begins with R and Julie is only missing a T on her name, with two factions fighting and these two characters creating a chance of peace.
The characters, hmm I don't know. I suppose they're a good batch, R longing to feel something, M understanding his place in zombie life but...evolving like R, Julie being a caring person. Those three are the ones you focus on and they are good to watch. Julie, understandably, reacts with fear to R before learning that she can trust him, though she does run away from him three times, two of them into danger. M, is a difficult character to describe, as I said he seems content with being a zombie, even telling R to eat Julie, but he does trust R and does come around. It was also a nice touch that M remembered to raise his hand to attract a waiter (Who obviously wasn't there) at a bar. R meanwhile, again he's hard to describe. This is a guy who we saw attack and kill someone! And yet the film successfully makes him likable, I suppose it's the conflict inside the character, the desire to have Julie and yet knew that because he has a tendency to eat flesh, that was something that will have some difficulties. And in a way it's all down to the acting, in particular Palmer who brings a lot of energy to the character, while Hoult and Corddry, if you excuse the pun, brought a lot of life to their characters.
The only other character worth mentioning is Colonel Grigio (John Malkovich), who I must admit was rather bland in this. The character itself is a traditional shoot-first-ask-later military stereotype. Apart from that, it's John Malkovich, it's the same problem I had with Jane Lynch in 'Wreck It Ralph', I'm not seeing the character I'm seeing John Malkovich.
So in the end, it's a pretty enjoyable...zombie romance. It does appear the film is being held back at times, but there really isn't a big amount to hate in this. The acting is great, the story is...good, the main three characters are brilliantly pulled off, and rarely flawed effects make this a pretty damn good film. It has some flaws, I won't deny that, but it is worth giving it a go.
Spoiler Section
Zombies being cured with the power of love? Really? In a world where the dead are rising they managed to make something unbelievable. No wonder Grigio was unwilling to believe zombies becoming human, that and the thought that he killed his wife when there was a chance of curing her must seem implausible. And even if you look past that, they're dead! Their bodies have been rotting, they have suffered bites to body parts, they have been stabbed, shot, etc, etc. Aren't there...difficulties with that? Won't it just be them living only to die because of the injuries they've suffered as a zombie again? And along with that, if the boneys (God I hate calling them that) are so decomposed they've truly lost their human side and are just hungry beasts, how are they capable of thinking? How can they strategise? How can they decide that going after R and Julie is the best thing to do?
Maybe the book will explain it better.
No comments:
Post a Comment