Just so...so bad

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I haven't read Jane Austen's classic novel Pride and Prejudice and I've never had the urge to. I read Sense and Sensibility and it wasn't my cup of tea. So, I turned this on with the hope that having a more contemporary element would make a story that clearly wasn't written for me, easier to sit through. I'm happy to report that it did and a large part of that was the humour that they incorporated into the narrative. Maybe other people saw it differently, but it just made me smile to watch people in this elaborate gowns and debonair dress slicing and dicing the undead. They establish the mythology (which was tightly written enough to satisfy me) and while they follow the beats of the original story, the zombie fighting is squeezed in and it works better than I thought it would have. It wasn't perfect, but I thought it was a pleasant surprise.So, while this movie departs from the classic story, my problems with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies don't have anything to do with those changes. The most noticeable flaw with this project is the sub-par effects and makeup. The budget on this is relatively low at $28 million (which was good considering how few people saw this in theatres) and unfortunately it shows. The costuming is good but with so many competing zombie TV shows (The Walking Dead) and movies (Zombieland) doing zombies so much better, it makes P&P&Z look even worse by comparison. I was also disappointed that the ending fizzled out. This could be blamed on the source material, but I don't see how. There's a considerable buildup with the rivalry between Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley) and George Wickham (Jack Huston) and the movie seems to be preparing you for a bad@$$ zombie fight. But there's almost nothing when the resolution hits and while I can appreciate a credit stinger that seems to set things up for a sequel, I wanted more.Through the positives and the negatives, the big thing that this movie brought to my attention was how talented Lily James is. I had seen her in supporting parts in Baby Driver, Darkest Hour and the Exception (Downtown Abbey isn't my thing) but she's the lead heroine here as Elizabeth Bennet and she knocks it out of the park. She anchors this movie capably and I don't know if this movie would have worked without her. She's turning into a performer that I would tune into a show or movie I didn't know about just because of her involvement. I largely liked the rest of the cast, but I also want to credit Matt Smith as the Bennet's wimpy cousin Parson Collins. I'm not familiar with him as an actor but he had me laughing in almost every scene he appeared in. This is a movie full of strong characters and Parson is conversely so pathetic that it becomes easy to mine laughs out of him being such a tool. I also enjoyed Bella Heathcote, Charles Dance, Jack Huston and Lena Headey in their supporting parts.I can understand die hard fans of Pride and Prejudice turning their nose up to this. But I'm not in that camp and this movie made the Pride and Prejudice story palatable for me. I liked the tongue-in-cheek humour, how they decided to work in the zombie elements in and the movie boasts a dynamic lead performance from Lily James. Is it a landmark in screenwriting? Absolutely not but I did enjoy this movie from beginning to end. My true rating for this would be a 7.5/10 but I'll round up to 8/10. I would recommend this to people looking for an interesting mashup of genres, but I would also warn you ahead of time, if you're a fan of the classic novel, this film probably will seem like blasphemy.

I have watched Pride and Prejudice and I have to say, this movie does to the dull and tedious Victorian era literature what chocolate does to icecream. It makes it better, so so much better.

I'm not a big fan of zombie movies, to be honest, but it's OK to see one once in a while. I'm against the idea of messing with classic novels this way. It's OK to make parodies sometimes, but this is neither parody nor a zombie movie. I enjoyed the romantic part of this story but sneered at the zombie part. Not quite sure what the intention of the people behind this movie was or what they were trying to say. If a movie doesn't deliver a message, it has to be entertaining. Other than that it's questionable. This movie is not OK with the zombie part. If we take out the zombie scenes, the movie wouldn't be ruined. Anyway, you will be entertained by the smooth dialogue between the actors and the romance in the story.

Just another adaptation of Jane Austen's novel but this time with zombies on the mix. The plot does not vary much from the original novel but contains these changes: instead of the bubonic plague, we have the zombie plague; the aristocrats, in addition to having a literary education, are also sent to China or Japan to learn martial arts due to the zombie threat; and the Bennet sisters, besides being beautiful and educated, are also fierce warriors with more childish than aristocratic ways. There is a part where Liz Bennet, instead of pushing her suitor away with the cynicism and coolness worthy of her social class, does not: they go into physical confrontation as if she were a ho discussing with her pimp in one of Bronx ghettos, only with refined language.The plot where zombies can talk and organize in community is poorly explained and could have been better explored. They should have put more emphasis on the zombies, as they have very little screen time. There is a part where one of the sisters sees the supposed 4 horsemen of the apocalypse facing back, but it is only this scene for a second or two; where do they fit in the middle of it all? We do not know because they never show up again. What purpose then has this scene?This film is only "Pride and Prejudice" in a zombie universe and nothing more, just to captivate more female audience to the zombie lovers wagon. As a final note I admit that production, costumes, direction, cinematography and performances are of very good level and in the end fulfills its function: to entertain and pass some time and then move on to better things.