PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES

A Grouchy Grownup review of PRIDE & PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES

With THE WALKING DEAD monopolizing the zombie genre, something had to be done besides WORLD WAR Z, which had a popular book to back it up, like this one but beyond the novel is the famous author Jane Austen who wrote PRIDE & PREJUDICE while of course AND ZOMBIES is added to let everyone in on not only the antagonists, but the joke...

Lily James on poster

Though it tries being serious with a pretty and tough, worthy ingenue and a sort of backseat leading man with a way of finding out who the undead are before quickly re-killing them. Sorta like turning Abe Lincoln into a vampire hunter without the tasteless aspect, this movie attempts combining an actual literary category into the zombie/horror craze. It's when a particular male character is added who wants for all people to join hands, fleshy and sinewy both, that an underlined Biblical end-of-world plot is added, doing nothing for the characters we're just starting to know... young ladies being taught to be proper, and the men they're trying to be proper for, or something... into a battlefield that leads to nowhere in a forced yet still overlong conclusion.

Also, more mystery would have helped. Seeing the zombies so soon, in a movie where they're part of the title itself, isn't necessary. Hell, it took KING KONG forty-five minutes to reveal himself. That's a different story altogether, sure, but there's a lot of potential to satirize so many Austen novels into the world of the Undead... which have become more popular than vamps and werewolves both... instead of just clumping everything together that, well, the title does, actually. So perhaps the movie just had to follow suit. Simply retitled PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND........ ZOMBIES might have done wonders.

RATING: **