Warm Bodies Director Jonathan Levine on Thawing Hard Hearts

Is it Twilight of the Living Dead, or does the new rom-zom-com Warm Bodies have brains in more than just its victims’ heads? That’s the main question fans have been asking, and starting tomorrow they can judge for themselves. As the first four minutes released online already reveal, it’s considerably wittier and less self-serious than anything involving the names “Bella” and “Edward,” but the way it plays fast and loose with traditional zombie rules could still rankle purists: end-stage black skeletons called Bonies are the alpha dogs of the undead, and the zombie condition can be reversed if the right amount of emotion is stirred within. It’s not quite Romeo and Juliet with dead and living replacing the Montagues and the Capulets, but that’s definitely a name-checked starting point in the story of a zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult) who protects a human fighter named Julie (Teresa Palmer).

Director Jonathan Levine’s last movie was the cancer comedy 50/50, which expertly balanced the tones of sad and silly. I was anxious to get his take on this night of the loving dead.

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