Warm Bodies

In Jonathan Levine’s 2013 film all of R’s inner life sits in the voiceover while the face on screen barely moves. Nicholas Hoult has said no director had ever told him to tone it down before; it had always been pump it up. That split is the trick: the jokes come from the narration, the acting shrinks to a millimetre of eyebrow, and recovery is noticed rather than staged. The second choice was movement, not makeup. A zombie coach and a Cirque du Soleil movement trainer worked with Hoult and Rob Corddry, so the walk came out of the body rather than prosthetics. It keeps the creatures human enough for the romance to work and stops the film being frightening anywhere. The source is Isaac Marion’s 2010 novel, grown out of his short story “I Am a Zombie Filled with Love”. The Romeo and Juliet mapping is orderly: R and Julie, Nora for the Nurse, M for Mercutio, Perry for Paris, the balcony kept. The adaptation deletes the dead wife and children the novel gives R. Filming was in Montreal. A good fit if you want to see how much an actor carries with the face switched off. Not for you if you need the outbreak rules taken seriously, since a cure is declared possible in the opening minutes.