I believe that this is the first time that I have reviewed any film with a vampire, werewolf, or zombie in it. Considering that Twilight movie series recently came to an end, there has been a real surge of this trifecta of undead literature.

The zombie film is sort of a genre in and of itself. Whether you are a fan of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead or the comic book/AMC series The Walking Dead, the premise is generally the same. It starts with the dead rising and trying to feast on the brains of the living, and the victims become zombies themselves. From there, it just is a matter of dodging slow-moving predators before they swarm and make you one of them.

Before I go on, I’m going to tell you some zombie movie conventions that I dislike. 1) Zombies are too slow to be a threat. Seriously, they move in slow-motion. Just jog and you can get away. Better yet, trip them, and will they even get up? I would love to see someone try that. 2) Why does a headshot work? In every zombie movie, a shot to the head seems to “kill” a zombie. Why would a creature whose insides are on its outside be stopped by a blow to the head. Why doesn’t a shot to the heart stop a zombie? 3) Why is it that zombies always cause the collapse of civilization? Especially when most zombie movies are about “a small group of survivors” who seem to be making headway (see dislike 2) into defeating the zombie armies. Why is it that the government and military were taken aback so much by zombies? If people stayed in their homes, locked up their windows, then the military could just go from town to town, and take out the slow-moving zombies with some headshots. Problem solved.

There are movies that make exceptions to these “rules”, and there are some like Zombieland or Shawn of the Dead which are valid parodies. I am not a real fan of any zombie movie, and yet, I liked Warm Bodies, more than any film that I have seen in a while. I only watched it because I saw it on HBO while I was at CES for free, and I really should have liked it. Not only is it a zombie movie, but it is a romance. That’s right, this is a movie with a human/zombie couple. At first you might think this is some attempt to put an original twist to the Twilight plot, and just substitute in the word “zombie” for “werewolf” or “vampire”.

Warm Bodies is a film that works on so many levels. I thought this film was going to be a small scale, and this isn’t a film that takes place worldwide. It does take place in a city that has a wall around it to keep out the zombies, and it could be the only city left on Earth. That is the setting, but the main character is not a human, but a zombie. It is told from the point of view of a zombie who cannot remember his identity before the undead plague. He calls himself R, and one day, a group of humans looking for supplies invades his territory. After eating the brains of one of the soldiers, R begins to develop feelings for the soldier’s girlfriend.

R then does everything he can do so that his undead friends don’t feast on his new girlfriend, Julie. What happens next is amazing, and would spoil the film if I talked about it, so be warned, there are spoilers after the jump.

The reason why I like this film is that it has something that I have never seen in a zombie film: a cure. Apparently, the new love that R feels towards Julie is enough to get blood pumping through his heart, which is enough to lead the other zombies to come back to life again. I’ve never really seen a zombie movie that is designed to end happily, and yeah, Warm Bodies is made to be a love story with a happy ending. This could because most zombie movies offer no deal into a cause of a zombie plague, and therefore offer no solution.

Of course, it is difficult for the world of the living to accept the new resurrected undead, and adaptation to change is one of the many themes of this many-layered story. Yes, variations of it have been done before, and I am not certain why this one captured my heart, but I am just glad that I saw it. This is why I recommend it, even if you are not a fan of zombie movies or romances.