Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Famous Romance meets Zombie Apocalypse

Rebecca's Rating: 85% or 85/100

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . . . what are you even to expect?  Do you look for Jane Austin’s wit or a bloody war against undead monsters?  Well lucky for you, they planned for both in this fantastic adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.  And, having seen the film for myself, I can tell you that it was amazing!!  Of course no movie is perfect, but the level of imagination that they were able to create and portray out did all of that.

The flow of the story was surprisingly fluid.  Austin’s style and the time period are maintained in the way the characters speak and in the way major events are built up with impressive power and suspense.  On the other hand, such events were muted enough to not be too overpowering, so it worked out pretty well and seemed fairly balanced.  Effective scene transitions also helped accomplish this balance, so kudos to the filmmakers for that too!   In the beginning of the video a few of the characters were a little harder to understand in terms of motives and inner feelings, but once you became familiar with each character's unique personality, their intents and feelings were clarified and easier to follow.  With that, the acting didn’t feel forced or cheesy and the characters interacted very well together.  One example of when complex character interactions just worked was when Darcy proposed to Lizzie and then they start a fight to hide their real feelings initially.  This scene is powerful and believable due to the tactful nature in which it was done.

Of course I should mention a few of the downfalls at some point, because these merit mentioning here as well.  To begin with, I felt that the weakest point of the movie would have to be in the wardrobe.  There is one part of the movie where Lizzie’s dress obviously doesn’t fit correctly and you fear that there is going to be a wardrobe malfunction.  Darcy’s choice of dressing in all leather occasionally leads him to squeak in every quiet moment (okay, this could be a plus because that was pretty hilarious).  Another pitfall of the film was that there was plenty of awesome fighting, but the film's heroes/protagonists never have blood splattered on their clothing or on their blades (sort of fishy when they are spilling lots of blood).  It definitely would have saved money on their wardrobe/makeup budget to not have blood splatter, but just a little on our heroes would have been sexy, I mean great. ;)

Before I give my own rating of the film, I thought I'd talk about some of the critiques out there that other reviewers have made about the movie. From what I gathered, it would seem that the average score for the film is somewhere around 50%, with IMBD giving it about 60%, Metacritic 45%, and Rotten Tomatoes 42%.  There were tons of other number ratings for the film out there, but that was the general assessment from the big dogs of film critiquing.  Additionally, one critic from the Guardian deemed the film a case in which "the undead are dead boring" (See full review here).  Various other critics noted the potential of the film and, with that, stated that it was somewhat "dead," not as scary as it could have been (Rollingstone), and simply didn't work (Washington Post).  I do agree that certain aspects of the film were... well, wonky and could have been better.  At the same time though, I still enjoyed it and thought that it merited at least somewhat of a better review because I objectively thought it was a good film.

Personally, I give this movie an 85/100 partly because it was suspenseful and generally fun to watch.  Also, the story followed the original Pride and Prejudice well, but simultaneously maintained its own uniqueness.  Cinematography, lighting and music I felt were all well-balanced and the fights were choreographed to be fascinating as well as believable.  Actors portrayed their characters in ways that made complex connections with other characters and with the audience.  The movie gave the enjoyment of keeping the original dialogue and events close, but still was willing to give way to enough creativity to throw a loop in the end (that I won’t spoil).  

If you'd like to hear more from Pragmus on this film, click on our video review below!

Thanks for reading, Pragmus fans!  Keep watching movies and be sure to comment on our Blog posts!  We want to hear from you and know that your opinions are valuable!

Rebecca Peterson
Head Programmer at Pragmus Media

*Co-authored and edited by Pragmus Sigma (Corey Cherrington)