I've never read Pride and Prejudice as over time I have been told about it through word of mouth or come across scenes in films or heard of it in many other avenues. Subsequently I have never read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but had hopes for the film adaptation that has long been gestating in Hollywood for some time. One iteration even had David O'Russel of American Hustle fame directing with Natalie Portman set to star. The book itself was written by Seth Graeme Smith who had recently adapted his other book Abraham Lincoln Vampire hunter to the screen and also revamped Dark Shadows as a film for Tim Burton, both projects that I was very uneasy with but I had hoped for this film. The director, Burr Steers had done the film 17 Again with Zac Efron but also brought us a great film with Charlie St. Cloud, so I knew he could do good character pieces, but it my mind it all hinged on if he could reign in all these strange elements into one coherent film. 
The premise itself is really weird as its two different movies hodgepodged together in one. It concerns Mr. Bennet whom has trained his five daughters all their lives to be battle ready to combat the zombie plague that was apparently carried over to England through trade expansion, a plague jokingly brought over by the French. All Mr. Bennet wants is for his daughters to be trained for survival while their mother Mrs. Bennet simply wants to marry her daughters off to the richest men possible as none of them are eligible to inherit their father's estate once he passes. At a ball being thrown, the two eldest sisters Elizabeth "Lizzie" and Jane meet Mr. Bingley, a very rich man in the army and Mr. Darcy a very skilled zombie hunter. Through the course of the film we watch these relationships clash to the backdrop of the zombie apocalypse and honestly it's really weird. There are times when the zombie apocalypse seems like a huge deal and then all of a sudden it slips right back into the relationships of these people and marriage proposals. The film's main problem is it has two films trying to be shown and because of that neither idea is given any weight. 
My biggest aspect to look for in a zombie film is what does this film bring to the zombie mythos? Surprisingly there is a lot here. Zombies in this universe can interact normally with other humans and maintain their higher functions as long as they don't consume human brains. This leads to Mr. Darcy cleverly using Carrion flys which immediately go to dead and rotting tissue to detect the undead. Something alluded to in many zombie films but not as overt as it is here is the idea that the zombies are biblical in the sense of the coming apocalypse. It is said that the Four Horsemen of the zombie apocalypse will bring about the end of days. This gives way to a church full of zombies that worship God and eat the brains of pigs as their Eucharist, as zombies don't become full monsters until they first taste human brains, living in peace much like a more developed storyline of Bub from Romero's Day of the Dead. All great concepts but none of them are followed through. The four horsemen are seen several times but never do anything and are never really explained, there are even several scenes where zombies allude to the horsemen helping them but then are never discussed again. The church of zombies might be the biggest waste because there is a great idea for a social commentary there for what it means to be human, but is quickly disregarded in lieu of "action" sequences with zombies. One of the heroes straight up feeds them human brains and turns them into a mindless rabble, not only making him seem like the monster he is accused of being earlier in the film, but creating more of a problem for the army trying to quell the zombie plague. Seriously, why would you turn peaceful beings into raging monsters? What thought process is that!? 
Then there is Pride and Prejudice. I've seen this done better in other iterations on film but the biggest problem is this story must share half the screen time with the zombie story, so none of the characters are really developed and you don't really care. The biggest insult honestly is the ruse that this film is a showcase of women with great warrior prowess. We watch the five girls clean guns, we watch them spar with one another and we watch them arm themselves with all sorts of blades but we barely see them fight. There are a few very terribly shot action sequences where we don't even see them show any true form to their combat as its mostly close ups of their faces in slow motion or some other weird action scene trope. This is such a shame as within the film your nobility is determined by whether you trained your fighting styles in China or Japan, however there is no attempt to even showcase the difference. When the big end fight scene happens Lizzie is running to save Darcy who we watch sword fight with someone for a good five minutes or longer and then Lizzie quickly cuts Darcy's opponents arm off. That's it. Darcy "saves" her from zombies several times. They show her going to toe to toe with Darcy in a scene or two but what does that say when our heroine constantly needs saving from this other man? This husband she obviously needs? The other girls are barely seen to do anything either as they have one big fight scene in the beginning and are constantly shown holding weapons but never actually fighting. So we have an interrelationship story that doesn't have time to actually give us real development which I guess you're just supposed to know about from Jane Austin's original book and a group of warrior women who fight zombies but barely do any real fighting. 
One of my favorite actresses is Lena Headey. She is the embodiment of a badass warrior woman and she plays Lady Catherine De Bourgh who fought and lost her eye battling the zombie plague. We get a quick three second glimpse of this fight that makes us think Lady Catherine is going to be the greatest thing ever! Nope. In fact we watch her sit on a throne the rest of the movie. When she could possibly fight Lizzie, she instead uses her surrogate brute of a man and doesn't even ride into the final battle. That was the greatest waste of one of contemporary cinemas greatest leading ladies.
The film itself is littered with brooding men and dreamy guys and the only person who is the antithesis to this is Matt Smith's character, Parson Collins. He plays such a pansy in this movie it is awkwardly amazing and is utilized best to show how much more strong and powerful the five sisters are as they have to fight while he seems to cower at times. 
In the end the film just felt like it didn't deliver on any front. I don't understand who the target audience is because the characters are pretty boring, the strong female role models barely come off that way, there's little to no action and the zombies are barely an after thought. This film just is not thought through in any way and is such a shame compared to how great recent films have put strong female characters on the screen lately, this should've have been one that shined through but just didn't seem to know its place at all. I would love to have seen what David O Russell would've done with this. Two severed zombie heads out of five.
