Title: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Director: Burr Steers
Starring: Lily James, Sam Riley, Bella Heathcote, Ellie Bamber, Millie Brady, Suki Waterhouse, Douglas Booth, Sally Philips, Charles Dance, Jack Huston, Matt Smith, Lena Headey.
‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ is a fresh twist on Jane Austen’s classic novel, based on the best-seller by Seth Grahame-Smith. A mysterious plague has fallen upon the 19th century England. The land is overrun with the undead altering the genteel Victorian social mores, and turning the bucolic English countryside into a war zone.
Director Burr Steers instills irony in a film that quotes the original novel by the book…with a touch of wacky spook. The opening line of the film paraphrases Austen with a slight variation: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” From there on the audience gets catapulted in a queer Victorian era, where cinema makes wonders, by mixing genres. A period film welds with a zombie flick.
‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ plays on the fact that zombies echo and amplify the hierarchal themes in Austen’s Victorian England, along with enhancing the independent woman Elizabeth Bennet is. There is a lot of dark humour to the story. The themes of wealth and marriage translate well and the undead become a good replacement for the lower class; as combat between zombies and normal humans stands in lieu of the Napoleonic wars.
The Bennet sisters seem to have come out of ‘Sucker Punch’ for grit and acrobatics, as they offer a new ferociously subversive side to the prodigious Victorian siblings. The eclectic ensemble of high caliber talent sure trained in martial arts. Lily James plays one of literature’s best-loved heroines with ease, as if it were a kindred spirit. Her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet is ballsy, as a mock-heroic scene between her and Darcy attests: Elizabeth and Darcy merely looked at one another in awkward silence, until the latter reached both arms around her. She was frozen – “What does he mean to do?” she thought. But his intentions were respectable, for Darcy merely meant to retrieve his Brown Bess, which Elizabeth had affixed to her back during her walk. She remembered the lead ammunition in her pocket and offered it to him. “Your balls, Mr. Darcy?” He reached out and closed her hand around them, and offered, “They belong to you, Miss Bennet.” Upon this, their colour changed, and they were forced to look away from one another, lest they laugh.
The cherry on top of this girl-power-kick-ass farce is the heartless Cersei Lannister from ‘Game of Thrones’, transformed into the equally despicable Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Lena Headey equipped with an eyepatch and outrecuidance enhances the parodistic atmosphere of the film.
If Jane Austen saw ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ today she wouldn’t necessarily be turning in her grave, she would be tickled pink by the way her masterpiece has been tributed with witty irony in this unexpected salmagundi.
Technical: B
Acting: B
Story: B-
Overall: B
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
