Opening: Warm Bodies

The world certainly doesn’t need another zombie flick. And yet Warm Bodies puts such a unique spin on the genre that it’s hard to dismiss it just for relying on a tried and true formula. The film centers on R (Nicholas Hoult), a zombie who is so out of that the only thing he remembers about his name is that it began with an “r.” He’s walking around one day in his usual stupor when he meets Julie (Teresa Palmer), one of the few remaining humans left in the world, and immediately falls in love. R saves her from a group of bloodthirsty zombies and tries to befriend her by taking her for rides in the BMW he’s coopted and spinning records from his vinyl collection. Julie falls for her charms but has to convince her zombie-hunting father, General Grigio (John Malkovich), that the zombies are worth saving. While the movie predictably concludes with a bloodbath, it’s got real heart and it somehow manages to make its Romeo and Juliet storyline work as Hoult who does a masterful job of portraying the subtleties in R’s change from zombie to human.