Warm Bodies
Boy meets girl. Boy is zombie. Boy sort of starts acting less like a zombie? Others follow suit. More invested zombies get annoyed with this. Hijinks ensue.
Book Discussion
Author: Isaac Marion (The New Hunger, The Burning World)
Published: 2010
I only read this after I saw the movie and found, as is often the case, that the book is more nuanced than the film. Our main character is “R.” He’s a zombie. We don’t really know much about the origin of how this zombie apocalypse started or even much about how R became a zombie but we do know that there seems to be two different “levels” or “types” of zombies: Fleshies and Boneys, the latter of which have decomposed down to the skeletal level with only muscles and tendons keeping them together. The boneys are the ones in charge over the other undead. Anyways, R isn’t your typical zombie. Despite eating brains and shacking up with a zombie “wife” and grabbing two zombie youths and calling them the couple’s “kids,” R realizes that he’s not completely rid of all human or “fleshy” capabilities and desires. Some spark of humanity still resides in him. This spark is fanned into flame when he and some other zombies catch some scavenging humans. R captures a human and eats some of his brains which allows him to relive some of the guy’s memories. In them, R sees a girl and when he sees the girl in real life, he helps save her, hides her and…
Well, you can probably imagine the rest. He tries to get her to like him. Eventually he takes her back to her people despite the growing humanity in him. The fleshies don’t understand the changes he’s going through. It causes them to question some things themselves. The boneys don’t like the possibility of an uprising and try to kill them both. Julie’s dad is a military leader of a human outpost and naturally wants to kill R. But R continues to change and become more human. His and Julie’s blossoming relationship begins to change the other fleshies. The book ends with the death of Julie’s father as he tries to kill R one last time. The boneys retreat as R and the other fleshies assimilate back into society.
That was a much more detailed synopsis than I planned on giving but I’m not going to delete it now. Anyways, despite the somewhat blatant Romeo and Juliet symbolism, I enjoyed this book. It was an interesting take on the whole zombie apocalypse situation without the tired trope of some sort of scientific cure that may or may not exist.
Movie Discussion
Director: Jonathan Levine (50/50, The Night Before)
Screenwriter(s): Jonathan Levine (The Wackness, The Night Before),
Debut: 2013
I don’t remember why I initially went to see this as I generally try to avoid actually spending money to watch zombie movies in theaters as I find them often untrustworthy when it comes to worth. I probably went because a friend wanted to go and Nicholas Hoult and John Malkovich were in it. Hoult is great as R and Malkovich did a fine Malkovichian job portraying Julie’s dad and his fervent hatred of the “undead” and desire to protect Julie. Really I think the best thing about the novel was that it didn’t take itself too seriously and the movie captures that vibe well. This is a serious situation and people die gruesome deaths but there’s an underlying current of “this movie is not World War Z.” I laughed several times while I watched.
The one big change they made in regards to the adaptation* was the fate of Julie’s father. In the book, he goes kind of crazy and tries to kill R again in the end despite the changes happening and gets bitten and dies. In the movie, he recognizes the change that’s happening and leaves R and Julie alone. I didn’t really like this change as it seemed to shoot for a happier ending by trying to tie everything up at the end but, in reality, it wasn’t necessarily the end of the world. Although seeing John Malkovich going crazy is never a bad thing.
My grades for this adaptation:
A movie has to be decent for me to be interested enough to read the source material. This book delivered and I’m planning on reading the sequel here before long. Isaac Marion, the author of the book, is also a funny follow on Twitter.* All in all, a solid experience for me.
*His handle is @isaacinspace if you happen to be interested.
As I said, not a big zombie movie person but I found this one to be pretty enjoyable and its novel form even better.
– Ethan
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