Warm Bodies (2013)

Warm Bodies is a daring, refreshing take on the zombie apocalypse. With humor and great acting this little film is solid and is even better then one might think.
The film starts out with the main protagonist of the film R, played by Nicholas Hoult. The opening sets the tone of the movie perfectly. It's comedy is spot on with the subject matter and hearing R the zombie talking to himself and expanding his thoughts on himself and everyone else being a zombie is great. It's a refreshing take on the deadbeat rundown zombie genre seeing it from a zombie's perspective for once. Some of the hardcore zombie fans will hate it but everyone else should breath it in like fresh air. 
The story here is simple. Zombie apocalypse happens and survivors are trying to survive, they raid a building with zombies, R sees a beautiful woman Julie played by the lovely Teresa Palmer. R captures Julie and keeps her safe from the other zombies and tries to get her back to where she came from. The chemistry that Hoult and Palmer have together is what really makes the film. As R and Julie spend more time together they get closer together and you see R display more human emotion as they bond closer to each other. The trailers and even the posters have basically labelled this film Twilight with zombies and it most certainly is not Twilight with zombies. It's about being and feeling human and what that is. Yes, romance and love is a part of being human but they don't focus their attention too much as they play with other emotions to create an interesting zombie trying to return to human form. 
One of the new things they have thrown into the exhausted formula are creatures called Bonies which eat both zombies and humans. This shakes things up a bit as the humans are torn between who is worse and who they should shoot first.
The zombie violence is toned down for the PG-13 rating, this may turn a few of you off due to it. The gore is also toned down extremely, to almost gore that you would find in a twilight film and that my turn some off of the film. The film also lags a bit in the middle but Palmer and Hoult make the lags in the story manageable due to their on screen chemistry.
Everyone in this film is great. Rob Corddry sells his role as a zombie and John Malkovich does a nice job on being the leader of the human resistance. But it's Nicholas Hoult that steals the show as he goes from lifeless zombie struggling to get out human emotion to human with full fledged emotions. 
Warm Bodies is a film that will divide zombie fans straight down the middle. Some will hate it for its more human take on a zombie as well as the toned down violence and gore. And some will love it for its refreshing take on the zombie genre with good comedy, great acting and fresh ideas. 
Even if you are at least a little bit curious about this film it is highly recommended that you check it out. 

3 out of 5