A few weeks ago, before I went on vacation and study leave, I posted about why I think zombie movies (a guilty pleasure of mine) are so attractive to a lot of people right now. The gist of my argument was that we are living in a time in history during which boundaries are eroding. For some this is an extremely exciting time, while for others it is a tremendously uncertain and fearful time. My claim was that zombie movies, in a scary and gross way, give us respite from this flux by giving us a very firm boundary to observe—the living and the undead. When the zombies show up, all other boundaries disappear. Everyone can agree that the zombies have got to go, and because they’re technically already dead no one needs to feel bad for dispatching them by any means necessary.
Well, I felt pretty good about the case I made, but only for about 48 hours. Two days later I watched a zombie movie called Warm Bodies, which is based on a novel by the same name (I haven’t read the book). This movie completely negated everything I had just written in my blog. From the moment the film begins it is obvious that it is different from any other zombie flick I’ve ever seen. The visual of the opening scene is like all the other movies: zombies stumbling around slowly and groaning. But here’s the difference—the audio narration is the inner monologue of one of the zombies! Not only is it strange that we can hear the zombie’s thoughts; more than anything, it is strange that the zombie is even having thoughts! From the outside, however, no one can tell what’s going on inside his mind because he can’t communicate in any other way than the grunts of a lifeless ghoul.
Early on in the film, this narrator/zombie is a part of a group of zombies that is chasing down some living people to eat them—he is still a zombie after all. Chaos ensues, and the vast majority of the living don’t make it out in the same condition. But even though he’s already eaten on some other people, when the zombie comes face to face with a young woman, instead of attacking her, he helps her to escape the other zombies and takes her to an old airliner cabin where he stays. The young woman doesn’t understand why the zombie saved her or why he has an old record player on which he enjoys playing classic alternative rock albums. She’s been taught to exterminate any zombie she sees, but this one seems different. He seems to be… somehow alive.
I need to let you know at this point that the living human beings are holed up in a part of the city that is behind an enormous wall that they’ve constructed. Understandably, the living are afraid for their lives and they are determined to exterminate the zombies. Come to find out, the young woman who is being harbored by the zombie/narrator is the daughter of the leader of the living people, a ruthless general played by John Malkovich, whose wife had been attacked and killed by the zombies.
Over the few days that they’re stuck together in the old airplane, the young woman starts to ask the zombie some questions. Amazingly, he seems to understand what she’s asking and even tries to respond. She wants to know his name but all he can remember and communicate is “R,” so that’s what she calls him. R treats her very kindly and saves her again and again from his fellow zombies. In return, the young woman begins to treat R kindly as well. They are forming a relationship, and yes, they are even falling in love.
Although there was just a little spark of life left in R at the beginning of the movie, as he grows closer to the young woman, his heart begins to beat again. He’s able to communicate more, and even his physical features begin to become less zombie-like and more human. He’s coming back to life, and he’s not the only one! At one point late in the movie there is a group of zombies standing outside an old electronics store transfixed by an image that is playing on an old TV. It is an image of a family holding hands with one another. As the zombies are standing there, their hearts begin beating again. They were dead, but even the memory of love and community is bringing them back to life.
The young woman decides that she needs to go tell her father and the other living people that R, and others like him, are coming back to life. Time is of the essence, however, because her father and the other living people are planning an all out extermination raid on the zombies. After all, they’re still working under my assumption from my last blog post—there is a clear boundary between the living and the zombies. But the young woman knows that this boundary is not as clear as she thought it was. The line is much more gray than it is black and white.
I don’t want to give any more of the plot away than I just have. Instead, I want to offer just a little bit of commentary on what Warm Bodies does that other zombie films do not. Warm Bodies is filled with both theological and sociological fodder, but I’m going to just narrow it down to one point that the movie makes, the point that profoundly affected me (as much as a zombie movie can affect someone). This point is that genuine love can bring dead people back to life. The good news tells us that this literally happened in Jesus Christ, that out of love, God brought the dead Jesus back to life, not through resuscitation, but through resurrection. God did this not only to prove that Jesus is, in fact, the Christ, the Son of God, the incarnated Word, but also to give us hope that death is not the end of us but that life and love wins in the end. In a less literal, but no less real way “dead” people come to life everyday as a result of love. Even when others thought they were completely gone, people come back to life, through the love of God and through the love of other people.
So many people have been wounded in life, very often by their families and almost as often by the Church. After a person is abused or neglected or condemned enough times, that person becomes lifeless, not too unlike a zombie. Like R, there may be an inner monologue still happening in there, but they can’t communicate with others. They just stumble and groan their way through life. And those of us who don’t feel that way, and who may have even been hurt by their inability to interact with us in ways that we feel are helpful and appropriate, we build up walls to keep them out, just as they have built up walls in their own hearts and minds to keep us out. We condemn them for this and for that and we give up on them because we just know that their hearts are dead, that there’s nothing left. What could get through to them? What might get their hearts beating again? Would ignoring them accomplish this? Would condemning them do the trick? Would placing them in a category that we can dismiss help?
No. There’s only one thing that can bring the dead back to life... LOVE. As individual Christians, as families, and especially as a congregation it is our call to model that love for others so they can see it like those zombies watching the TVs. But even more than that, it is our call not just to show others what love looks like by loving one another; it is our call to show them what love feels like, what love is, by actively loving them. When we love, our walls collapse and when our walls collapse we're able to love even more. Like the young woman in the movie we become advocates for those we love and we stand up with them against those who refuse to recognize them as equals. That's why I loved this movie so much. It reminded me of what I already knew from Jesus--love brings the dead back to life. Let's live that out together.
