University of San

University Carlos
of San Carlos
Basic Education
Basic Education
Department
Department
South Campus
South Campus
MOVIE CRITIQUE
MOVIE CRITIQUE
“WARM BODIES”
“WARM BODIES”
Submitted
Submittedby:by:
JesJes
Cromwell P. Olavides
Cromwell P. Olavides
Grade X –XSan
Grade Carlos
– San Carlos
Borromeo
Borromeo
Submitted to: to:
Submitted
Ms.Ms.
Hazel E. Enad
Hazel E. Enad
Subject Teacher
Subject Teacher

Am
 SYNOPSIS

Eight years after a zombie apocalypse, R, a zombie, spends his days wandering

around an airport filled with hordes of his fellow undead, including his best friend M.

While R and a pack of zombies are out hunting for food, they encounter Julie Grigio and

a group of her friends, who were sent out from a walled-off human enclave in a nearby

city. R sees Julie and is drawn to her. R rescues Julie from the pack and takes her back to

an airplane he lives in at the airport to keep her safe.

Julie, initially terrified of R, starts to trust him. The two continue to bond, causing

R to slowly begin to come to life. Julie abandons R and returns to the human enclave

alone. A heartbroken R makes his way back to the airport when he sees that M and other

zombies are also beginning to show signs of life, making all of them targets for the

Boneys - skeletal zombies who prey on anything with a heartbeat. R and M lead a group

to the human enclave, where R sneaks inside the wall and tells Julie that the other corpses

have also been coming back to life. Julie and R escape to a baseball stadium where M and

his gang of zombies square off against the Boneys. Julie and R run, but find themselves

trapped. R jumps with Julie into a pool far below, shielding her from the impact. After

Julie pulls R from the bottom of the pool, they kiss. Colonel Grigio finds them and shoots

R in the shoulder. Julie attempts to persuade him that R has changed, when she notices

that he is bleeding from his wound - revealing that their kiss has caused him to

completely revive. The humans and zombies combine forces and kill most of the Boneys

and the zombies slowly assimilate into human society.

The film ends with a now fully alive R and Julie watching a wall surrounding the

city being demolished, signifying the end of the apocalypse.

 CHARACTERIZATION

1. R

With no memory of his previous life, R is a zombie in an airport filled

with hordes of his fellow undead. He is convinced that the world before all that

happened was so much better, where people could enjoy each other’s company. R

constantly craves human flesh, especially brains, as he is able to "feel alive"

through the victims' memories he experiences when he eats them. Unlike the

others, he controls his hunger with all the humanity that is left in him. R is a

hoarder and is fond of collecting old Vinyl and snow globes, placing them in the

C-17 plane he calls ‘home’. R is entranced when he meets Julie and their eventual

love slowly breathes back life into him.

2. Julie Grigio

The daughter of Colonel Grigio, Julie is a young woman who lives in the

walled and heavily fortified human enclave. Convinced that they are the integral

part between the humans and extinction, Julie joins her father’s troops alongside

Perry, her boyfriend and Nora, her best friend. Unable to accept Perry’s untimely

death, Julie clung to the belief that zombies can change. While she was initially

terrified of R, she began to see that zombies have an ounce of humanity left in

them and becomes attached to R. Julie and R’s love was the key to curing and

saving the corpses.

3. M

A middle aged and wearing a grey suit, M is a pale, flesh-eating zombie.

 M is a confidant to R, achieving rudimentary communication with him through

grunts and moans and occasional near-words. Like the other zombies, M starts

showing signs of life after seeing Julie and R hold hands. He later convinces R

and the other zombies to find Julie at the human enclave and fight off the Boneys.

4. Colonel Grigio

Having his wife bitten by a corpse, Colonel Grigio had to kill his wife to

prevent her from reanimating into a zombie. From this stemmed his belief that

zombies are uncaring, unfeeling and incapable of remorse. The Colonel becomes

a leader to the remaining human survivors after he and his men built the fortified

wall around their city. A father to Julie, the Colonel looks after her and is against

Julie and Perry’s love. He threatens to kill R when Julie tries to convince her that

the zombies can change. He tells his troops to join forces with the zombies to

defeat the Boneys after seeing with his own eyes R coming back to life.

5. Perry

Perry is a young man who is a soldier of Colonel Grigio’s troops in the

walled human enclave. Attempting to recover medical supplies, Perry, Nora and

Julie head to the abandoned buildings where they find themselves surrounded by

R, M and their pack of zombies. Perry gets killed by R. It was later revealed that

Perry’s parents were reanimated into zombies and how he had to protect Julie

from them by joining Colonel Grigio’s troops. He appears later on in R’s dreams.
 CRITIQUE

Warm Bodies is a paranormal, romantic, zombie film based on the book of the

same name by Isaac Marion. Directed and written by Jonathan Levine, the film

stars Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Analeigh Tipton and John Malkovich. The

studio Summit Entertainment backed the film, which was produced by Bruna

Papanadrea, David Hoberman, and Todd Lieberman and executive produced by Laurie

Webb and Cori Shepherd Stern. Warm Bodies began shooting in Montreal, Québec,

Canada in September 2011 with its airport scenes being shot at Montreal-Mirabel

International Airport. Warm Bodies was released on January 31, 2013 in

the Philippines, Greece, and Russia. It was released on February 1, 2013 in the United

States and on February 8, 2013 in the United Kingdom.

One of the scenes that were strikingly profound for me was when Julie and R

found themselves surrounded by a horde of zombies at the parking lot. R couldn’t do

much of anything at that time. He looked at Julie for a while and acting upon instinct,

held her hand. The other zombies stared in awe as R, standing firm with Julie by his side,

walked past them. R and Julie got inside the car and escaped the zombies. In life and

death situations like the aforementioned, we have the tendency to be paralyzed and

caught up in our fears. We must conquer this fear and protect our loved with all that we

have because at the end of the day, they matter the most.

Another scene that was significant for me was when R sneaks into the human

enclave alone to tell Julie that the zombies are slowly coming back to life. Upon reaching

the Grigio’s mansion, R calls out Julie’s name and she hears him. Julie is shocked to see

R. She exclaims that people in the human enclave are not like her and will not hesitate to
shoot him on sight. The scene represents Romeo & Juliet’s balcony scene in a certain

way. The movie is an allusion to Shakespeare. The scene also shows ubiquity of

Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet with R personifying Romeo, Julie personifying Juliet,

Perry personifying Paris and M personifying Mercutio.

Every film has a fatal flaw. The best movies are made by effectively concealing

these flaws. Warm Bodies is one of those movies. The Boneys in the film, according to

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times, were mediocre special-effects creations that

run with a herky-jerky style. The Boneys weren’t convincing enough but because they

had less screen time, the flaws in their animation were effectively concealed. So far, this

is the only minor setback I have encountered in the film.

Despite the weaknesses, the movie is absolutely phenomenal. Director Jonathan

Levine has done a fantastic job in fleshing out the characters off of Isaac Marion’s novel.

The movie’s original soundtrack and score was the peak of the mountain. Marco Beltrami

and Buck Sanders, the composers of film’s score, managed to highlight the film’s heart-

warming and comedic scenes. The soundtrack evoked an 80’s feel which gave the film a

classic aura. The casting was great and the actors did an outstanding job acting out their

respective characters. Overall, Warm Bodies is a well-paced, nicely directed, post-

apocalyptic love story with a terrific sense of humor.

From the movie, I have learned that loving makes us think irrationally and act

recklessly. Loving saves us from drowning in melancholy that we have brought upon

ourselves. We start wanting other’s happiness even if that excludes us. It is in loving

others that our lives will seem complete and meaningful. Love breathes life back into

people. Love exhumes the world.