I liked the movie, as tropey as it was. It is at least a fresh take on the zombie genre.
But wouldn’t some kind of vampire type creature have worked better?
I just can’t accept too easily dead corpses turning human again, I could accept a metabolically deranged vampire plague victim starting to become human again easier.
Say he meets his old girlfriend from before he got infected, kills the current boyfriend out of hunger and jealousy, and then protects her while resisting his hunger for blood so long he starts going back to human. Maybe eats a bite of food she is eating.
This would also make more sense as a cure that could be spread, instead of the rest of the zombies being cured by the power of WUV!
But using ‘kind-of-zombies’ opened the door for satirical commentary on how we go about our days in a mindless trance, returning day after day to the places we’re used to working and living, trudging along with little hope of change. And such.
I don’t think it would have worked nearly as well. Maybe the mechanics of it work a little better, but thematically, it doesn’t fit very well at all.
Vampire movies are about seduction and power. They’re cat-and-mouse, ancient trickery, and bloodlust.
Zombie movies are about alienation. Man’s inhumanity to man. They’re about how we’re a racist (Night of the Living Dead), consumerist (Dawn of the Dead), self-centered and isolationist (Zombieland) species, and we need to overcome those weaknesses (cast as as mindless hordes of “other”) to survive.
Warm Bodies is about our fears that we’re becoming isolated from each other by modernity. The main character has this rich inner monologue, but he can’t communicate with anyone else. The whole premise of the movie is in the shot where all the zombies are staring at their phones. We’re becoming mindless drones tied to our devices, unable of making a human connection! He lives in an airport, designed to take people where they’re going, but he’s not going anywhere. The airport is purgatory. And he has a plane full of records and art. He’s a hipster terrified that no one will ever love him for him, unable to move out of his rut.
And his salvation comes from his willingness to reach out and care for someone else.
You could write a vampire movie where the vampires are cured by the power of love, but it wouldn’t be this movie at all.