First Four Minutes of Rom-Zom-Com Warm Bodies Reveal Smart Satire.

There was some concern, I think, that Warm Bodies – a romantic-horror-comedy, rated PG-13, about a zombie who falls in love, was going to do for the shuffling undead what Twilight did for vampires, i.e. make them really stupid. It is probably with this theory in mind that Summit has put out the first four minutes, and surprise! They’re pretty sharp.

Writer-director Jonathan Levine didn’t wow me with his previous horror effort All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, but he did at least evince a knowledge of the genre. Here, we see more of the humorous edge he gave to 50/50 – “My hoodie would suggest that I was unemployed,” indeed.

What I like best, though, is the return to old-school George Romero-style satire, as zombie protagonist R (Nicholas Hoult), unable to communicate, wonders what it must have been like when people actually talked to each other – and we flash back to a pre-zombie world in which everyone is on their cell phone, not communicating with any of the people around them. And the relationship with the celebrity zombie who pops up at the end of this clip…let’s just say it rings true to life except for the undead part.

I’m now officially looking forward to seeing the rest.

Warm Bodies opens February 1st, 2013.