The stars of the warm-hearted zombie flick Warm Bodies (Flickr).

In theaters now, Warm Bodies follows R, a zombie in a post-apocalyptic world, who feels something is missing in his life, unlike the rest of the absent minded zombie population. One day while out searching for a human to devour, R sets eyes upon Julie as she uses her shotgun to kill R’s cohorts. R becomes fascinated with Julie and decides not to feast on her. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Julie’s boyfriend. As R protects Julie from danger over the following few days, they fall for each other and realize that as R develops feelings for Julie, he miraculaously starts to become human again. Knowing this, they make it their mission to help heal the other zombies before there are no humans left.

The overused zombie genre may have audiences expecting Warm Bodies to be a predictable reiteration, but it manages to weave together horror, comedy, and romance in a refreshingly funny way. Typically, zombie flicks depict the zombies as the enemy, but for the first time we see the world from a zombie’s perspective and immediately start rooting for him. Of course, this is helped by the fact that R becomes more human over the course of the movie, making him progressively more relatable and showing a fascinating, subtle transformation from zombie to human over the course of the film.

Nicholas Hoult, who plays R, hit this performance out of the park. While Hoult is restricted to a lot of voice-overs due to a zombie’s limited speaking capacity, his physical actions are well thought out and quite convincing. Interestingly, he made the conscious decision to not blink while he was still a zombie because he believed that zombies wouldn’t blink either. Let’s hope he’s not a method actor.

Opposite Hoult, Teresa Palmer plays Julie and gives a performance worthy of putting her on the list of actresses to watch for. Both leads are particularly fabulous because of their flawless American accents in spite of the fact that they’re British and Australian, respectively.

Warm Bodies was well paced and riddled with perfectly timed comedic dialogue. Perhaps the creativity of the story brings hope to those who may fear a looming zombie apocalypse, and as one of the most endearing love stories we’ve seen hit theatres in a while, Warm Bodies is sure to leave audiences swooning for their own zombie romance.

Reach Staff Reporter Sarah Mickelson here.