by Dave Griffiths

Created on: March 18, 2013   Last Updated: March 20, 2013

Zombies aren’t exactly a ‘sexy’ monster. Their slow moving, can barely talk and seem to want to rip apart any human they meet in a bid to get that much sought after snack... brains. With that in mind, it is hard to imagine that any filmmaker would ever be able to make a romantic horror with a zombie being the ‘romantic’ creature, but to his credit that is something that director/screenwriter Jonathan Levine has been able to do with ‘

Warm Bodies’.

Even the fact that he has been able to pull off a romantic horror is a credible feat in itself because he has been able to pull it off with one hundred per cent precision. In fact when you add Warm Bodies to films such as ‘50/50’ and ‘All The Boys Love Mandy Lane’ you actually begin to realize that Levine is one of the most talented young filmmakers going around at the moment.

The story of ‘Warm Bodies’ is taken from a novel by Issac Marion and finds R (Nicholas Hoult), a young zombie who is still questioning what the hell happened to him, and is trying to deal with the fact that he is now cut off from humans. He is forced to live in a disused airport with other zombies including M (Rob Corddry) and a dangerous breed of ‘skeleton’ zombie that don’t seem to mind ripping apart the average zombie either.

R’s life takes a turn for the better, however, when as part of a ‘feeding party’ he meets Julie (Teresa Palmer). While R feels a connection with Julie straight away, there are some things that could possible prevent her from seeing him as a potential boyfriend, first of all he has just killed her boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco), her father is Grigio (John Malkovich) who leads the ‘human alliance’ against zombies, and oh yeah he is also a zombie which doesn’t make him all that endearing to a human.

Possibly the production company green-lighted this film due to the success of ‘The Walking Dead’ but what Jonathan Levine has delivered is a smart alternative film that will stand the test of time. Levine shows his skills as both a screenwriter and a director by making R likable for the audience. That was the key to the film working and the fact that he is a zombie meant it would be a uphill battle to pull it off, but Levine does it with ease. The choice of having the narration coming from R’s point of view straight away means the audience gets to see the world from R’s point-of-view

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