zombie movie

DVD /Stream of the Week: Warm Bodies

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Take the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast and we have the charmingly funny Warm Bodies.  When marauding zombies corner some human teens, a hunky teen zombie is smitten by a saucy live girl (Teresa Palmer), saves her from his comrades and shambles her off to his lair.  After he saves her life a few times, she begins to look past his deadness.  But her people want to shoot him in the head, and his people want to feast on her organs, so there’s that.

Nicholas Hoult, all grown up from his role as the kid in About a Boy, plays the zombie.   Although he can only grunt to the zombies and live humans, the audience hears him narrating his thoughts.  It’s normal for any besotted guy to warn himself, “Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”, but it’s very funny when the guy is dead and looks dead.

Director Jonathan Levine’s (50/50) screenplay is adapted from Isaac Marion’s novel, and it hits all the right notes.  It’s the story of a really nice boy trying to get a girl to like him, and it’s just hard for her to get past the fact that he ate her boyfriend’s brains.

Rob Corddray is excellent as Hoult’s zombie best friend and, hey, John Malkovich is in this movie, too.  I’ve included Warm Bodies in my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.  Warm Bodies is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and sreaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and other VOD outlets.

Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies

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SHAUN OF THE DEAD

Here’s my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.  I’m generally not a fan of the genre because the primary elements of a zombie movie  – gross looking zombies, gory human deaths and spectacular zombie slaughter – just aren’t enough to keep me coming back.

That’s why the best zombie movies are hybrids of another genre.    I’ve highlighted five movies that use the framework of the zombie genre to create movies that can stand on their own as comedies or thrillers.  Plus they ease off on the gore, which is just fine by me.

The very idea of reanimated dead who must eat live humans is, of course, absurd, and that absurdity can set up some fine film comedy, including Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, Fido and Warm Bodies.  And when you add a first rate filmmaker like Danny Boyle to the mix, you can get a top thriller – 28 Days Later.

Warm Bodies: the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast

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Take the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast and we have the charmingly funny Warm Bodies.  When marauding zombies corner some human teens, a hunky teen zombie is smitten by a saucy live girl (Teresa Palmer), saves her from his comrades and shambles her off to his lair.  After he saves her life a few times, she begins to look past his deadness.  But her people want to shoot him in the head, and his people want to feast on her organs, so there’s that.

Nicholas Hoult, all grown up from his role as the kid in About a Boy, plays the zombie.   Although he can only grunt to the zombies and live humans, the audience hears him narrating his thoughts.  It’s normal for any besotted guy to warn himself, “Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”, but it’s very funny when the guy is dead and looks dead.

Director Jonathan Levine’s (50/50) screenplay is adapted from Isaac Marion’s novel, and it hits all the right notes.  It’s the story of a really nice boy trying to get a girl to like him, and it’s just hard for her to get past the fact that he ate her boyfriend’s brains.

Rob Corddray is excellent as Hoult’s zombie best friend and, hey, John Malkovich is in this movie, too.  I’m going to include Warm Bodies in my upcoming list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.