Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: All Bark and No Bite

Rating: ★★★ out of 5

Staring: Lily James, Sam Riley, and Jack Huston

Directed by: Burr Steers

Rated: PG-13

Length: 107 Minutes

Dear Walking Dead fans, if you are looking for something to keep your blood lust for the dead under control during the long workdays between episodes, this movie is not for you.

Based in 19th century England, the movie Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the typical girl meets guy story; only this one has a rotten twist. Five swords wielding, trigger-happy sisters are forced to live up to their mother’s dreams of marrying wealthy men, while simultaneously fighting the undead to save themselves and the ones they love.

Eldest sister Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James) meets boy, Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley), the wealthiest bachelor in town. Boy’s arrogant ways makes him undeniably a hard pill to swallow to the lone girl who would rather be buried in books than at the cool kids table playing cards. But somehow by a twist of fate, or in this case thanks to the dead, boy and girl fall madly in love and live happily ever after.

But it’s not the Romeo and Juliet styled love story that will deter zombie enthusiast, it’s actually the zombies. The decomposing does not look very decomposed. The actors look as if they have had a few skin prosthetics added to their face to look like falling flesh, and a grey contact here and there, and then told to pour a Gatorade bottle over their head to represent bold.

And voilà! We have zombies.

There was no similarity between them either. Some were fleshy and juicy looking while others were just bone and decaying tissue. Which will it be makeup department? The first full fledge zombie looked more like a Cinco de Mayo Sugar Skull. To add comedic flare to an otherwise gory situation, gory being used VERY lightly, the sugar skull zombie had a rather large snot bubble that was oozing out of her nasal cavity.

The film ties in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with the ever-growing popularity of the dead rising to claim back the land. Screenwriter, Burr Steer beautifully showed the tug of war love between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.

One minute Elizabeth’s inner monologue is fantasizing and drooling over a man she outwardly claims to be repulsive and the next minute she is turning down his awkwardly phrased marriage proposal – half insult, half “you are the love of my life.” But Steer’s expertise stopped there.

Most zombies in the film literally did not even realize they were dead!

In what appears to be The Notebook meets World War Z, Steers was not afraid to add comic relief throughout the entire film. Jabs were thrown at English government officials, the current state of male chivalry, and Parson Collins (Matt Smith), an eligible bachelor and cousin to the sisters, seems as though he might have been on 19th century ecstasy.

It’s no easy task to create a comedy-romance that will please an audience that is really out for guts, gore, and galore as proven by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Maybe someone else will come along with the perfect love and zombie duo, but in the meantime it is Steer’s rendition of a post-apocalyptic love affair.

In theaters nationwide.

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