Warm Bodies

'R' (Nicholas Hoult) shuffles around the local airport terminal, barely moving faster than peak-time queues. However no plane will ever be landing and the fellow 'commuters' are just as dead as he is. 'R' is a zombie and though he manages to have a fully self-aware inner monologue with the audience, his memory of his previous life is vague at best and his exterior is the shambling frame of a barely-concious, instinctive, raw meat-eating teenager. 'The Walking Dead Bored', if you must.

Julie (Teresa Palmer)  lives in a walled encampment on the edge of a largely abandoned metropolitan city in a world that has been ravaged by a zombie plague. The encampment is ramshackle but safe and kept intact under a firm, if well-intentioned thumb by military man Grigio (John Malkovich). One of the scouting parties, looking for food and medical supplies is led by (his daughter) Julie - who is almost glad to be able to get away from her restrictive home when she can.

Things go sideways when the team are attacked at the desolate airport complex by 'R' and his fellow zombies, but in a moment that even he doesn't fully understand, 'R' saves Julie from the others and takes her back to his 'home', a wrecked plane on the runway. She soon begins to realise he's not quite like the other human-chewing horde and  when he begins to utter coherent sentences and expressses better taste in music than half the guys she's ever met, she realises there's something vaguely human still lurking within. It's clear that a human and a corpse are somehow learning unexpected lessons from the other... but how is that possible? What's more, with Grigio about to start a major offensive to clear out the undead and some of R's fellow zombies also showing signs of emotion, can R and Julie stop an even more apocalyptic and needless confrontation? With a mutual enemy in the skeletal 'Bonies' (the fully decayed undead), time is running out.

While there's little doubt that Shaun of the Dead retains the zom-rom-com crown, Warm Bodies is a good mix of the sublime, the ridiculous and the heartfelt: if not a gushing love-letter to the genre, then at least a well-intended valentine from Hollywood. The story comes from Isaac Marion's original novel and Jonathan Levine's screenplay (he also directs) retains the central offbeat premise well.

You can barely stagger outside your home without hitting a zombie-themed project in waiting, but Warm Bodies is a film that has fun with the genre  - not pushing the boundaries so much as looking at it from an engaging angle that's both freshly skewed but mainstream-friendly. Though there's some gore, blood and brain-digestion to begin with, hinting at a potentially darker tone, the film decides to play that aspect down more and more as the story continues. What might have been an even more effective piece with some fight-scenes and zombie carnage worthy of  '15' certificate, settles down to safer, less challenging (but still fun) character-driven fare and a more edible tale of basic acceptance and change. It's a compromise, but it should still play well to both the Twilight crowd and those looking for something different.

Hoult strikes just the right note, a continual look of continued bemusement and hope, as if willing himself out of a bad dream but not quite able to fit all the peices together. Palmer starts off as an identikit ingenue love-interest but demonstrates some solid screen-presence. A scene between them halfway through the film cements the otherwise subtle Shakesperian metaphors.  Malkovich's character is more generically brusque and has less depth, but he clearly relishes the role and gives it his all. The Daily Show's Rob Corddry is also good as 'M', 'R''s closest thing to a friend. The more limited-in-number full-scale FX are are also solid, though it's good to see expansive physical make-up and almost Ray Harryhausen-esque skeleton warriors making a comeback.

Ironically, when it comes down to it, Warm Bodies may lack that little bit of extra bite that could have made it a classic but it actually has much more heart than the week's other so-called conventional 'romcom' - I Give it a Year - which itself was undead on arrival.

8/10

Warm Bodies (12A) is released by Entertainment One and is in cinemas today. Enter our Warm Bodies competition HERE...