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...because red wine is the best drink to accompany zombie and vampire films, natch.) Pardon me, this is just me noodling about a film that came out six years ago. Most people probably saw the trailer and went either, “A zombie film; no thanks, I’ll pass” or “ZOMG cutest zombie film EVAR!”
I concur with the latter; Warm Bodies is sweet, funny, has an amazing soundtrack and is an obvious homage to Romeo and Juliet apart from the happily-ever-after ending; the names of the lead characters are “R” and Julie. R saves Julie from the other zombies, and in turn, Julie saves R from being a zombie by literally awakening his heart. His resurrection is infectious: the other zombies who haven’t been completely lost by becoming “bonies” also experience it. There’s even a charmingly awkward balcony scene. It’s a feel-good film, and being a soppy perkygoth romantic, I love watching it.
But there’s a bit of a sting in the tail, because I also can’t help overthinking it. In the beginning, the zombies are all “others” to the uninfected humans, whether they’re bonies or R-analogues. In the conclusion, the “others” are divided into two categories. The R-analogues are others who can be re-integrated by assimilation (and, er, not dining on brains any more). The bonies are irredeemable and must be shot in the head. Inevitably, I see a parallel with immigration: between acceptable immigrants, who have the resources, skills, and sufficient cultural adaptability to become part of a society, and those who don’t and therefore must be excluded.
I think this is one of the reasons the zombie concept is so appealing. It allows for a very soothing simplification of otherness, by giving human-shaped others a characteristic so repugnant, eating the living and turning them into zombies/others, that it is not difficult to justify their murder. It’s uncomplicated, comforting, and unrealistic.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to finish this glass of wine and enjoy the shower/make-up scene soundtracked to M83’s “Midnight City”, because I refuse to let an excess of analysis spoil my enjoyment.
I concur with the latter; Warm Bodies is sweet, funny, has an amazing soundtrack and is an obvious homage to Romeo and Juliet apart from the happily-ever-after ending; the names of the lead characters are “R” and Julie. R saves Julie from the other zombies, and in turn, Julie saves R from being a zombie by literally awakening his heart. His resurrection is infectious: the other zombies who haven’t been completely lost by becoming “bonies” also experience it. There’s even a charmingly awkward balcony scene. It’s a feel-good film, and being a soppy perkygoth romantic, I love watching it.
But there’s a bit of a sting in the tail, because I also can’t help overthinking it. In the beginning, the zombies are all “others” to the uninfected humans, whether they’re bonies or R-analogues. In the conclusion, the “others” are divided into two categories. The R-analogues are others who can be re-integrated by assimilation (and, er, not dining on brains any more). The bonies are irredeemable and must be shot in the head. Inevitably, I see a parallel with immigration: between acceptable immigrants, who have the resources, skills, and sufficient cultural adaptability to become part of a society, and those who don’t and therefore must be excluded.
I think this is one of the reasons the zombie concept is so appealing. It allows for a very soothing simplification of otherness, by giving human-shaped others a characteristic so repugnant, eating the living and turning them into zombies/others, that it is not difficult to justify their murder. It’s uncomplicated, comforting, and unrealistic.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to finish this glass of wine and enjoy the shower/make-up scene soundtracked to M83’s “Midnight City”, because I refuse to let an excess of analysis spoil my enjoyment.
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* In the book, the main character R is obviously cast as older than his teens; he is at least his mid twenties because he was wearing a suit and thinks he worked at some downtown white collar job, so that implies that he's a college graduate. Worse, the first ten minutes of the audiobook has the sentence "This female and I have fallen in love", where the female is another zombie he was riding up and down the escalators with, who then promptly drags him to zombie church where the zombie priest assigns them zombie children and he ends up trapped in the equivalent of a zombie suburban loveless marriage who has to commute to the city to bring home the brains and the only thing that can make this grown man feel again is the love of a nonzombified teenage girl, which I find...super repugnant. The movie, at least, seems to cast them as equal life stage partners.
* The book is written in the first person, and the narration is adroit and agile in describing what's happening in real time despite telling us over and over how slow his thought processes are because he's zombified, thereby undermining it's own narrative over and over.
So yeah, stick with the movie people! I can't watch the movie without thinking about my incandescent hatred for the book, and it just goes to show that the book is NOT always better than the movie.
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