Warm Bodies
User Score
6.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 137 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 107 out of 137
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 137
  3. Negative: 23 out of 137

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  1. MarcDoyle
    Feb 6, 2013
    3
    Extraordinarily slow and weak. It's the type movie that is squarely in my wheelhouse I should have liked this. A waste of Malkovich. And the bonies? Check out Tom Chick and crews's rundown at Quarter to Three they encapsulate to the gist of my feelings on this film. Even Rob Cordry can't get it done here. They break all the zombie rules, and in doing so, it becomes ridiculous.
  2. Shiira
    Apr 11, 2013
    4
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Are all zombies cursed with lock-in syndrome, or is it just R., a jarringly articulate walking corpse, whose interior monologue indicates a cognitive ability to love that belies the grunting and monosyllabism? Wandering aimlessly through an airport that has long-past outlived its usefulness, R.'s inner voicings of alienation("Why can't I connect?") and self-loathing("...so pale.") uncannily echoes Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, whose opening can be gleaned in Warm Bodies. The word "adaptation", here, is applicable in the biological sense, referring to the existential struggle of transitioning from life into death(heretofore only implied in Dawn of the Dead, where the zombies faintly recall the consumer culture of the living, converging on a shopping mall in parodic imitation of their former selves) and the angst that comes with post-death, whereas in Adaptation, it's a literary term: Kaufman's fruitless attempt to transform words into images from a non-fiction work about flowers. Guided by Charlie's tortured agency, the film's conceit that his screenplay and resulting film are occurring concurrently, gets thrown into chaos, when Kaufman's identical twin hijacks the narrative and turns Adaptation into some cheesy action picture. Donald is a hack, a Robert McKee disciple, whose tenets are a counterintuitive affront to Charlie's iconoclastic-minded psyche for non-formulaic screenwriting. Similarly, in Warm Bodies, despite the film's lack of self-reflexivity, two zombie narratives: one that demonstrates fidelity to the genre, and the other, while not the work of a maverick by any means, does humanize a historically malevolent monster whose inner life has rarely, if ever been explored, seem to emanate from two sensibilities at odds. A "bony", on one hand, is your standard issue zombie, engaged in the singular activity of unrepentant cannibalism, but R., conversely, while sharing the bonies' overriding appetite for human flesh, is a corpse with scruples, a corpse who feels conflicted about his bloodthirsty nature. Akin to Charlie attending a McKee seminar on screenwriting, selling out his guiding principles so he can finish adapting The Orchid Thief, R. watches a zombie, his compatriot, turn into a bony, ripping the flesh right off the bone: a two-fold adaptation that first, shows how taxing a conscience can be, as the decomposing man gives up on the idea of being nearly human, and second, on an intertextual level, like Adaptation, kinesis takes precedence over languor, or rather, Warm Bodies grows increasingly Hollywood in form and content. A bony, after all, is a zombie who adapts to the concept of death; it desires none of the earthly pleasures, but to eat. As a filmic metaphor, the self-mutilating zombie can be reconstructed as a Charlie figure, tearing himself apart as penance for using Donald's ideas to finish his shooting script. Charlie, in essence, is a zombie, sad and alone, more dead than alive. When R. intones, "Don't be creepy. Don't be creepy," as he approaches Julie, the girl he keeps captive in his tarmac-situated home, a converted airplane, the moviegoer can imagine the hoody-cladded young man's analog, the bipolar writer, chanting the same mantra as he flirts with the diner waitress whom he wrongly invites to an orchid show. R., however, wins Julie over, in due part because he eats her boyfriend's brains. Here, the film borrows from another Kaufman/Jones collaboration, Being John Malkovich. On a subconscious level, Julie can sense Dave's presence behind R.'s eyes, just like how Maxine would know whenever Lottie was occupying the famous actor's body. By snacking on the dead beau's grey matter, R. collects his memories, thoughts, and feelings, which makes the zombie more like Dave than himself. So strong is Dave's aura, Julie allows R. to occupy the same bedroom in an abandoned suburban house. If Julie gave necrophilia a go, would R. stand for "rapist", since the faux Romeo, unbeknownst to the girl, is a conduit for Dave's ghost. Nevertheless, R. is a zombie in love, signified by his heart turning red, the same hue perceived by an ideologically pure boy from a 1950s television series, who discerns the rose's true color after having just made love to a real girl. Arguably, Pleasantville is a zombie film, a latent one. In the aftermath of the girl's mother experiencing sexual pleasure for the first time, she hides in the kitchen, embarrassed by her flesh tones and ruby lips. Afraid of what her monochromatic husband may think, with Bud's help, she acts in a reactionary manner, using black and white makeup to conceal the newfangled vividness. But she's alive, like R. is alive. Contextually speaking, you can't go back to Night of the Living Dead, the 1968 George Romero original, whose zombies now seem one-note and monotonous, just like a sitcom housewife of yesteryear. To answer R.'s friend's question, the mother feels it. Life after death.… Expand
  3. Ecko69x
    Feb 4, 2013
    0
    This movie is the zombie version of Twilight. The mythical view of vampires have been ruined and now the same fate has bestowed zombies. Do not let the high user scores fool you. They will most likely be from the adolescent female crowd of Twilight fans.
  4. davidrdlo
    Feb 11, 2013
    0
    I've registered just to say how horrible is this movie. It's the worst movie I've ever seen, it doesn't even make sense. The bad acting make It completely awful.
  5. marco34la
    Feb 4, 2013
    1
    Warm Bodies was a huge disappointment. It was another film I went into with low expectations, and was still let down. The trailer is very cute and perhaps if this were a 60 min tv show on MTV it could have been more bearable. It had some cute moments, but again, not enough to warrant the hefty ticket price.
  6. Switters
    Feb 3, 2013
    0
    This movie makes Twilight seem like Citizen Kane. Easily in the top 10 worst movies I have ever seen. How did this script even get the 'green light' to get produced? How on Earth did the critics rate this about the same as The Hobbit? Just as one example of how inane this movie is. .it starts off with the Zombies being unable to talk or communicate other than grunts and rare single words, but suddenly they are all chatting it up with full sentences spoken slowly with broken English, including Rob Cordry and the lead actor. Also, the Zombies can smells humans inside buildings, but when it comes to the female lead, as long as she acts like a Zombie, she can walk amongst them if she is with her Zombie boyfriend. An intellectually offensive movie.… Expand
  7. imthenoob
    May 20, 2013
    2
    Rather slow paced at first but it picks up. Action scenes are average, Nothing special about them. Acting is ok, Probably the only good thing about the movie. The biggest flaw of it though was that it's so incredibly stupid. Within a few days a guy goes from a zombie to a talking human once more all because he bonds with some girl, How stupid is that!? That's what annoyed me the most about Warm Bodies and it's why I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.… Expand
  8. Oroiael
    Feb 6, 2013
    2
    Maybe I missed the point of the movie, but this sends a terrible message. Sort of like Forrest Gump with its advocacy of stupidity. I'm sorry but its not okay to be a moron. Just like the silly Twilight junk, we have another case of a dumb young girl and a boy who is wrong for her, not just wrong but biologically wrong, like science and stuff. Of course, for the children who run Hollywood, that is ok. Sure why don't we all hook up with zombies...nothing bad can happen then. I'd tell my daughter, "Yes, I'm sure he's a nice boy but don't let him eat your brain on the first date. Save that for Marriage."… Expand
  9. asdasd33a
    May 17, 2013
    0
    mildly interesting for first 5 minutes of the movie and then it takes Rome Juliet to new levels of low by taking this sort of script seriously. It would have been more interesting to see if Romeo was a vibrator with all the grunting that is happening instead of dialogue.

    Shakespeare should sue.
  10. RealManta
    Feb 7, 2013
    3
    Even after pushing to seal up plot holes the story broke itself again and again. How did the knife wound in his chest not destroy his heart when he came back to life? Why are bonies stronger without skin or muscles? This on top of mediocre acting and cringe-worthy CG scenes ruin what is a cool idea for a different kind of zombie movie.
  11. haleyamber77
    Feb 16, 2013
    1
    Honestly this is one of the worst movies I have ever scene, well besides Rubber. What ever happened to rotting flesh and ripping obnoxious faces off? For one the make up is pathetic; Honestly my 6 year old cousin could of done a better job on those veins then a professional. Two who the hell did beginners photo shop on those “Bonnies”, Syfy could of make better skeletons then that. Thirdhirdly The camera shots were horrific. The whole movie shouldn’t be blurry, what happened to making everyone look fat in HD, gotta boost the American fat people organization’s hopes somehow. Now that we have the basic’s said and done let’s start digging on the bigger picture ZOMBIES. Their not supposed to beat people up, their supposed to rip you apart, and when did they get so strong? They’re supposed to be fragile morons like the average teenage girl, and not some scrawnie white boy like Edward Cullen. Also they’re not even meant talk, like really now it’s called growling and mumbling not saying words like”hungry” and “safe”, they’re not two year old’s learning their first words. The fith bad thing about this horrible romantic comedy” is nothing really fit’s together it’s put in randomly like a freshman’s first thesis essay. Marcus is not supposed to blurt out some huge paragraph of word’s at “R” without some back ground information, and what made him tell R that he had a dream about some breakfast food what ever happened to his true love? Also i’m pretty sure that some plot twist’s would of helped. The movie in it’s self if a good concept but honestly someone else should of directed it. I would of love to of seen R start to turn into some Bonnie when Julie broke his heart in the bed room, then had to have Marcus come save the day again by having to track Julie down and get her to find some way to get him to not rebel against everything to make him have a flack back of the brain he enjoyed oh-so very much’ or something stupid like that.) Honestly they should make a second movie with this concept, but please make the zombies LOOK LIKE ZOMBIES! And not some white trash punk that rolled around in a pig pen.… Expand
  12. RealScript
    Mar 12, 2013
    1
    So I guess zombies are where we draw the line with young love. Going in I didn't expect much from this movies and I was right. I didn't expect this movie to have a good story line, decent acting or realistic graphics and they delivered. I feel like the whole movie was made to follow the trend of paranormal love and it just didn't work out. Despite few scenes where I was woken up by the sound of people leaving, I was a sleep the whole time. An I never fall a sleep in a zombie movie.… Expand

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
59 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 38 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 38
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 38
  3. Negative: 3 out of 38
  1. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    Feb 26, 2013
    83
    Levine – whose last picture was the intriguing, if only partly effective, cancer comedy “50/50” — is going for something more here, exploring what makes us human by contrasting it with a character who has lost all the basics and is desperate to get them back.
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  2. The Guardian
    Reviewed by: Peter Bradshaw
    Feb 9, 2013
    60
    Zombie-ism in the movies is traditionally inspected for metaphorical qualities. Here it could simply be that we males are emotionally dead … until love revives us.
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  3. Total Film
    Reviewed by: Rosie Fletcher
    Feb 9, 2013
    60
    A Frankenstein’s monster of comedy, romance and horror that’s less than its parts, Warm Bodies entertains but underwhelms.
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