Movies
[BD Review] Emo-Hipster ‘Warm Bodies’ Is Unique, Cute and Sorta Fun
It’s incredibly exciting to see director Jonathan Levine return to his horror roots. Since his teen masterpiece All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was buried by Dimension, among others, he’s gone on to direct some wonderful films. Now, he’s back in the genre with his adaptation of Warm Bodies, a Twilight-esque emo-hipster zombie film that’s charming, cute and sorta fun.
The film follows Nicholas Hoult as a zombie named “R” (because he can’t remember his name) who navigates the viewer through the film via his constant yammering. He falls for a human survivor, Julie (Teresa Palmer), who learns that zombies aren’t just black-hearted creatures of the night. Together they discover something that could change the world, which leads them on a dangerous journey.
Warm Bodies makes wonderful social commentary about how we’ve become a society obsessed with technology, so much so that we’ve put up giant walls, and thus need to learn how to connect again. It comes off a bit heavy-handed at times, as well as being a tad too on the nose and requiring the viewer to have a high level of suspension of disbelief.
And while the studio continually promised it’s not a “Twilight” zombie movie, without a shadow of doubt, it is. But, unlike the Twilight films, Warm Bodies is beautifully shot, features relatable characters, and a carries a romance that the viewer may actually connect with. There’s a lot to like about Warm Bodies, even if you’re into old school horror.
Still, the hardcore horror nuts may be turned off by the lack of violence and gore typically shrouding the zombie subgenre. There’s nothing but cutaways and implied violence, but the film isn’t about that – it’s about us, looking in a mirror and making changes to our cold-hearted lives… recognizing that we’re all zombies in the modern world. There’s something special about a film that actually has something to say, which is why Warm Bodies gets a soft pass. But don’t expect to fall love with the film as there’s still an inherent lack of intensity and excitement. Ultimately, Warm Bodies is a bold and unique new look at zombies in a way that’s more than just a faceless horde of undead creatures eating brains.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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