In the majority of zombie films, we see what Thomas Hobbeswould call a return to the state of nature: what effect thedissolution of institutions (hospitals, police forces, schools) has on opneople, who predictably become brutal, self-serving, and immoral. In the condition of the state of nature, man feels no security beyond what security he can provide himself. Zombie movies could be considered a subgenre of horror, but the zombies themselves are not really what we’re afraid of—we’re afraid of what
happens when social cohesion breaks down, when humans choose to act in their own self-interest, instead of acting in the community’s best interests. In psychologist Paul Bloom’s words, “It’s not like the rise of the undead is a serious concern we should focus on, but that’s not what zombie movies are about. Zombie movies are about what happens when there is no police anymore, no law, and no government. The real danger in zombie movies is never zombies—it’s people.” The best films of this genre—films such as the low-budget genre-shaping British independent 28 Days Later (2002),
Hollywood blockbuster World War Z (2013), and South Korean runaway success Train to Busan (2016)—show that most human survivors of the various zombie plagues act poorly out of fear and desperation. But, crucially, these films also show a few regular people acting with immense courage and compassion in horrific situations. In World War Z, for example, the fleeing protagonists are saved when a family under duress unexpectedly opens the door for them, exposing themselves to peril. In 28 Days Later, orphans and drifters form a new loving family unit. Train to Busan’s reluctant hero initially shuts the train door on a pregnant woman and her husband, who are closely pursued by a gang of zombies; at the last second, and due to the wealth of voices behind him screaming to let them in, he opens the door for them. Each of these three films feature scenes that shed light on the ways humans treateach other: poorly, kindly, carefully, dismissively, with compassion or contempt. Humans attack other humans—out of fear, by fighting to get on the last train, by wielding the power of law enforcement in a lawless land, or even by turning people away and shutting the door. These three films hint at what is wrong about saying all people will act badly in the face of disaster, that humans are fundamentally base and self-serving. There is something about the characters that
makes you resist, challenge or distrust the Hobbesian thesis—that the life lived outside the regulating structure of institutions is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But in important ways, the films still follow the idea that a renewed social contract, a restored government or the decimation of the zombies is the only way for people to be at peace. That is why the 2013 horror- romance-comedy-drama Warm Bodies proves to be a new kind of zombie movie: the zombies themselves—with their grotesque, oozing, bloody bodies—offer us a path back to humanity.
But how? How do the undead of Warm Bodies enliven themselves and the rest of humanity? How does this film offer a critique of the idea that only laws make people do the right thing and not any innate instinct for the good?
“What am I doing with my life?” begins the internal narration of Warm Bodies’ character “R,” a teenage zombie who spends his days shuffling through an airport and making caustic observations about his fellow zombies. “I’m so pale. I should get out more. I should eat better. My posture is terrible. I should stand up straighter. People would respect me more if I stood up straighter. What’s wrong with me? I just wanna connect. Why can’t I connect with people? Oh, right. It’s because I’m dead. […] I can’t remember my name or my parents or my work. Although my hoodie suggests that I was unemployed.”
One day R encounters Julie, a pretty human, while he’s eating her boyfriend’s brains, and feels a shift in his priorities. He wants to protect her. She makes his heart beat again. Warm Bodies offers us a new category beyond the division between dead and undead: the transitional phase, wherein a zombie begins to recall his humanity and slowly regain his human attributes—a pulse, a flushed face, a warm body—by either experiencing or witnessing human connection. (Parenthetically, the transitional zombie-human phase is a helpful allegory in a movie about teenagers. High-schoolers are like pupae themselves, somewhere between larvae and adults.) What brings R back is caught up with his ingestion of other people’s brains, because he gets to experience their human memories; in one, seeing himself as a zombie shocks him. His friend, hilarious and wonderful and played by Rob Corddry, feels a change by simply gazing at a poster of two people holding hands, which reminds him of R and Julie holding hands. And over time, small acts of human kindness and connection, witnessed by the zombies, promote a physiological change in the zombies’ bodies. They begin to come back to life.
In most zombie films we are offered a solution that isn’t much of a solution. In World War Z, the World Health Organization vaccinates the living population with a deadly (but curable) virus that averts the zombies’ attention while the humans continue to fight and burn the undead, seemingly until the end of time. In 28 Days Later, everyone seems to have died and the three remaining protagonists live alone on an island. In Train to Busan, only two of the main characters survive and the film ends with them making it to a presumably safe base. But in Warm Bodies, the resolution of the film goes beyond the traits of the genre. By forging connections with recovering zombies, the non-zombie (but nasty and brutish) humans reaffirm and reconstitute their humanity.
To us—and this is maybe why people keep making and watching zombie movies—zombies are so bad they make the pre plague world seem idyllic. Since the undead have yet to rise in 2022, it can seem like we’re living in the “before times” of a zombie movie. (Like the TV show Community’s character Abed, I
like to pretend I’m in the movies sometimes.) But just because we don’t need to worry about mangled, brain-eating corpses doesn’t mean we don’t have any problems with social cohesion,
institutional life, or the after-effects of raging self-interest. What we learn from zombie films, and Warm Bodies in particular, is that our state of nature is more nuanced than Hobbes’s “war of all
against all,” his bellum omnium contra omnes. In these films we see people, having been reduced to the state of nature, who are contemptuous of others, who do actively decide not to help them,
who will take advantage of life without judicial law. But we also see that people who act in this manner are actually exceptions, are villains, and often turn into zombies by the end. In contrast, the
heroes of zombie films (who are almost always ordinary people with the same fears and hopes and weaknesses as everyone else) are startled and frightened when their fellow humans act as
monstrously as the zombies. And they figure out better ways to act. In this way zombie films offer glimpses of differently- motivated humans, small bands of misfits or family groups who are
able to help and protect each other—and even provide sanctuary to strangers. Contrary to Hobbesian “state of nature” logic, these films remind us of the natural human disposition to work well in
groups, or to help and protect the people we know and those we accidentally encounter. So, in these dark times, these strange days, we should go watch some zombie movies and warm our cold little hearts.