★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride
and Prejudice and Zombies has been a recommended read for as long as I can
remember, but having only experienced Burr Steers rompy but ropey adaptation,
I’m starting to wonder if the praise is perhaps undeserved.
Charles Dance’s Mr Bennet (delivering more lines than the
rest of his later dialogue combined) describes to us that 19th
century England has been over-run by hordes of undead, and that his daughters
have been trained to value vigilance and weaponry as highly as politeness and
finery. Still, the milieu of high
society lives on: Mrs Bennet (a chortling Sally Phillips) insists that her children
find themselves worthy husbands, such as Mr. Bingley (Douglas Booth). Daughter
Elizabeth (Lily James) is having none of it, preferring swordplay to suitors,
even when confronted by the dashing Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley).
The greatest hurdle facing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was always going to be the fusion
between Austen’s source material and the corpse-ridden comedy. Rather than face
this barrier with a limber sprint, Steer’s film prefers to fiddle with its
shoelaces: you’ll spend a long while pondering as to where the battalions of Satan’s
own have wandered off to. When we finally engage in the punchy-stabby
kicky-shooty action for which we paid our admission fee, it’s certainly
entertaining, but a straight-faced angle places mud before blood. It’s an oddly
splatter-free affair.
Austen’s own content is carried off with superior focus:
Lily James leads the pack superbly, eager to scuff her pristine appearance in Cinderella with cheery vigour. Riley
appears to be auditioning for Batman as a dour-faced, throaty-voiced Darcy, and
Matt Smith is gormlessly great as Reverend Collins. The character vignettes in
general are far more acerbic than the genre hybrid elements, and only accentuate
the ill-judged seriousness of the head-chopping segments to follow.
2015’s irritable strain of needlessly tangled narratives is
now as infectious as the zombie virus: Pride
and Prejudice is not a complex story, and no amount of horror fusion calls
for muddled plot points and a half-baked sequel setup that’s more plea than
promise.
If you remain within the handful that found some pleasure in
last year’s much-maligned Victor Frankenstein,
there’s every chance you’ll
discover the same camp thrills here, albeit accompanied by similar failings of
balance. Zombies are known to crave the warmth of human flesh, but here they
show up far too late, and their tardiness leaves them – and us – resigned to
lukewarm leftovers.
