Pride and Prejudice and Zombies [Review]

Lizzie Bennet knows what's going on. Credit: Lionsgate.

If there’s something strange, in your country estate, who you gonna call? Zombie slayers. Seth Grahame-Smith’s parody novel of the legendary Austen classic is a mashup of romance, comedy, and of course, the undead brain-eaters. If it seems an utterly ridiculous choice of novel to give the big screen treatment that’s because it is. To say otherwise would be to entirely fool yourself. The rather self-explanatory nature of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is one of its best features; you know you are going to get some pride, a dash of prejudice, and a militia of zombies, and that’s all you can really ask for.

Taking a bite out of Austen’s original plot, the film centres on the Bennet sisters who are caught in an undead epidemic in Regency era England, where a plague has turned local aristocrats into carnivorous cretins. Trying to maintain the line of defence against this disease is legendary slayer Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley), who visits stately homes and executes anyone who shows symptoms, by using his trusty flies. In this alternate universe, the sword-wielding Bennet sisters, headed up by Elizabeth (Lily James), are trained martial artists who are adept in all manners of combat. Charles Dance and Lena Headey also star as Mr. Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, respectively.

After being whisked off her feet in Cinderella, Lily James is firmly grounded as ‘Lizzie’, the feistiest of all the sisters, who prides herself on her warrior abilities. James is the bad-ass, knife slashing, zombie-kicking heroine you didn’t even know you needed in your life, until now. Commanding attention on screen, but still able to roll with the cheeky humour, James is effortless in her performance alongside Riley.

Read the rest of the review (including thoughts on Matt Smith's hilarious Parson Collins): here.