What differentiates “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” from its literary source material is its big action sequences, but they’re staged, lit, shot and edited in such muddled fashion, it’s often difficult to tell what’s going on. There’s no visual context to the assaults and no way to determine their source or size, which depletes these scenes of their tension, making it impossible to become engaged. Sometimes this is intentional, as in Steers’ frequent use of blurriness right at the point of when a zombie is about to devour someone, but it doesn’t work in those instances, either. Too often, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” is so darkened as to be inscrutable, as in a basement scene when the Bennet sisters are bantering while sparring in preparation for the next possible attack—the women have to worry about both marrying the right man and not being eaten.
In case it’s been a while since you read the book in high school English class: “Pride and Prejudice” centers on headstrong Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James), the second-oldest of five daughters of average means who’s not nearly so obsessed with marrying up as her mother (Sally Phillips) is. While her beautiful older sister, Jane (Bella Heathcote), becomes romantically involved with the handsome and obscenely wealthy Mr. Bingley (Douglas Booth), Lizzie enters into a love-hate relationship with Bingley’s close friend, the even more obscenely wealthy Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley). Social classes clash and sparks fly. Misunderstandings arise but eventually clear up, characters are forced to admit to both their pride and their prejudice, and everyone lives happily ever after.
In the zombified version, though, the Bennet girls have all been trained as warriors, and the social-strata element comes into play in regards to the location where that training takes place (Japan for the elite, China for everyone else). George Wickham (Jack Huston) isn’t just predatory and untrustworthy, he also might not be entirely alive. And the haughty Lady Catherine de Bourgh (a fierce, sleek Lena Headey) is the most celebrated zombie-killer of them all—with an eye patch to prove it.
Sometimes, this mixture works—mainly in the quieter, calmer moments, as when the characters sit around a drawing room cleaning their guns or one-upping each other while comparing their expertise in the deadly arts. And as the sisters dress in their finest gowns and style their hair for a ball, they also carefully slide daggers into their garters for protection. The small, deadpan moments in Steers’ script have more of an impact than the massive, noisy set pieces.
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