Two previous trailers introduced audiences to Jonathan Levine’s adaptation of Isaac Marion’s 2011 comic, thoughtful, zombie novel. Now here comes the first four minutes of the actual film.
Nutshelled, the film is a rom-com dystopia between two teenagers, one of whom is a zombie who devours the brains and memory of the boyfriend of the girl he becomes attracted to.
This time, the footage unveiled today veers away from the relationship between the film’s stars — Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer — and instead looks at the unrelenting boredom of R’s zombie existence.
Hoult, simply called R, takes audiences through a typical day in a post-apocalyptic world. Wandering through an airport with other listless, grey creatures, intelligent thought seems beyond most of them — but not R.
“Why can’t I connect with people?” he asks/thinks. “Oh right, it’s because I’m dead.”
Imagining the past day-jobs of other zombies, trying to remember what life was like before the event that made most of them flesh-eating, undead monsters, R shuffles through his day “bumping into people, unable to apologize or say much of anything.”
R’s best friend, M, (Rob Corddry) also spends endless days and nights at the airport. The two zombie ‘bros’ engage in mostly grunt filled conversations, so in that sense it’s fairly true to life. I jest.
Also starring John Malkovich, Dave Franco, Cory Hardrict, and Analeigh Tipton, the first four minutes of Warm Bodies is an intriguing taste to an amusing premise that might say a lot — or a little — about the human condition.
Due to hit theaters on February 1, 2013, this could be Summit-Lionsgate’s next payload.