Zombie movie lovers beware: this isn’t your average zombie gore fest.

R is a zombie. He doesn’t remember anything about his past (not even his name), and his new interests include eating other people’s brains to enjoy their memories and to feel more human. That is until he meets Julie and, somehow, falls in love with her. But it would never work out. Not only because he’s a zombie and she isn’t, but because he just gorged on her now ex-boyfriend’s brains.

But he tries anyway, and Julie begins to see that not all zombies are the monsters that they are led to believe.

Based off a novel of the same title by Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies is really a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet but with zombies. I didn’t even know it was a book until I saw the movie, but it did kind of remind me of a short story in the collection Zombies vs. Unicorns, although that one was not a Romeo and Juliet retelling. Just a similar: boy is zombie, falls in love with girl, dad is mad, etc.

While the movie did have it’s comedic parts, I wouldn’t say it was laugh out loud hilarious (although I’m sure the guy sitting behind me in the theater would easily contest that). There were parts that I chuckled, but I feel like the parts that were supposed to be the most comedic were overplayed in the trailers I saw on TV. A few parts of the movie also seemed pushed and at one point it felt like it was going on a bit too long.

However, I still thought it was an interested take on zombies and of a cure for the outbreak. Warm Bodies is definitely a zombie movie you don’t see if you want gore, but that you see if you want a view of zombies from a zombie point of view.

Grade: A-