🧟‍♂️ Warm Bodies (2013)

“When Zombies Got Twilight’d 🧟‍♂️💔✨”

Let’s start by showing y’all the trailer, shall we? 🎥

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Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

So here’s the deal: Warm Bodies tries to take the zombie apocalypse and turn it into a romance. Yup. A love story between a zombie and a human girl. Sounds bold, maybe even fresh… but the execution? Yikes. What should’ve been creepy or inventive instead feels like Twilight with extra gray makeup.

R (Nicholas Hoult), a zombie who shuffles around an airport, narrates his inner thoughts. He falls in love with Julie (Teresa Palmer) after eating her boyfriend’s brains. Yes, you read that correctly. He then saves her from other zombies, takes her back to his airport “crib,” and… slowly “heals” because of love. Meanwhile, humanity is still struggling to survive against hordes of undead and creepy skeletal zombies called “Bonies.”


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Character Rundown

R (Nicholas Hoult) – Our zombie narrator. He’s awkward, monotone, and supposed to be “charming,” but mostly feels like Edward Cullen with rigor mortis.

Julie (Teresa Palmer) – Human survivor. She should run the other way, but instead buys into this romance.

Colonel Grigio (John Malkovich) – Julie’s father, a military leader who, understandably, does not trust the zombie trying to date his daughter.

M (Rob Corddry) – R’s zombie best friend who starts “feeling things” again too, because apparently love is contagious.



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Pacing / Episode Flow

The film is a strange mix: half awkward rom-com, half YA apocalypse, with occasional bursts of action. Tonally it’s all over the place—it wants to be funny, romantic, and horrific, but never sticks the landing.


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Pros

💀 The Bonies: The one legitimately cool idea. These skeletal, evolved zombies are creepy and unsettling, a reminder of what this film could’ve been.

🎤 Narration gags: A few of R’s deadpan inner monologues get a chuckle.



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Cons

🧟‍♀️ Romance logic: Julie forgives way too fast that R literally killed and ate her boyfriend. The “love heals zombies” idea feels like parody, not drama.

🎨 Tone problem: Never scary enough to be horror, never sincere enough to be romance, never funny enough to be comedy.

😬 Cringe factor: So many moments feel like second-hand embarrassment rather than endearing.

🩸 Wasted potential: The Bonies are underused, shoved aside for awkward flirting.



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Final Thoughts

I’ll be blunt: I don’t respect Warm Bodies. It takes the zombie genre, which thrives on horror, survival, and dread, and turns it into a YA love story with all the depth of a bad fanfic. Sure, the Bonies were a neat idea and gave me a brief shiver, but the rest? Forgettable.

This movie wants to be quirky and heartfelt, but instead it dilutes zombies into glittery rom-com props.


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Rating

4/10 – The Bonies deserve better. The rest can stay buried.


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Spoiler Warning ⚠️

From here on, spoilers ahead.


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Spoilers

R and Julie meet when R eats her boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco). While munching on Perry’s brains, he absorbs his memories—and instantly falls in love with Julie. Instead of running away screaming, she starts to trust him after he awkwardly plays her some music in his airplane hideout.

Meanwhile, R begins “changing.” His heart literally starts beating again because of Julie. Other zombies catch on too, suddenly rediscovering feelings, friendships, and speech. Love, apparently, is a cure for the zombie plague.

The conflict peaks with the Bonies—skeletal, monstrous zombies who represent the final stage of decay. They attack both humans and R’s “halfway-healed” zombies. R and Julie team up to stop them, convincing Colonel Grigio (John Malkovich) that zombies can be “redeemed.”

The climax? R and Julie jump into a pool of water, R nearly drowns, Julie saves him, and then boom—his eyes turn human again. Love saves the day. Humanity embraces their zombie neighbors like it’s no big deal. Roll credits.

It’s cheesy, hollow, and undermines the zombie genre’s roots. Where Dawn of the Dead gave us biting social commentary, Warm Bodies gave us “Romeo and Juliet, but one’s undead.”