Featuring an inept use of on-the-nose music over an insipid narrative that poses as satire, “Warm Bodies” should be taught in film schools for its cornucopia of mistakes that filmmakers should avoid at all costs.
Voice-over narration plagues the movie even more than the rudderless zombies that roam across the storyline like flies on manure. Kristen Stewart lookalike Teresa Palmer — albeit with blonde hair — plays Julie, a hopeless romantic who falls for a teenaged zombie boy named R (Nicholas Hoult in full watch-me-acting mode).
A widespread infection has turned people into dead-eyed cannibals. “R” is all that the de facto Goth boy can remember of his former name. Julie’s military dad Grigio (played by John Malkovich in one of the worst performances of his career) commands his troops from behind a walled-off refuge.
Bad enough that brain-eating zombies rampage over the land, there are also a group of pathetically-constructed CGI skeleton creatures called Bonies who swarm around when the flaccid story slips below sea-level. Co-writer Jonathan Levine (“50/50”) based the movie on a novel by Isaac Marion. I guarantee that after squandering 98 minutes of you life on “Warm Bodies,” you will have no desire to seek out Marion’s book version of a movie without merit.
Rated PG-13. 97 mins.
ZERO STARS
