By Kara Fellows
Yes, you read that correctly. “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” hits theaters February 5, and it’s everything you could hope for with a title like that. It’s a movie that delivers all the romance of traditional adaptations while upping the stakes and never taking itself too seriously.
Adapted from the best-selling novel with the same name, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” follows the same basic plot line of Jane Austen’s original novel except that zombies are a real and dangerous threat to London. The five Bennett sisters are capable women who curb stomp a zombies’ heads without flinching and then flounce off to a ball in search of husbands. All your favorite parts of “Pride and Prejudice” are still there – including swoon-worthy eligible bachelors – but the zombies give the movie new life.
“It’s a romance drama but then throw into that anytime you’re maybe getting a bit bored a big zombie attack” Bella Heathcoate, who plays Jane Bennett, said “So it really just makes it a very sort of exciting romp and quite scary and funny.”
A killer cast joins Heathcoate, including Lily James, Sam Riley, Douglas Booth and Matt Smith who all had fun tweaking their timeless characters.
“The laws of the universe are slightly heightened and the characters that exist in it can therefore be slightly heightened” Smith said.
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“We had knife pins in our kickers like we could do anything we want” James added.
Clearly these Bennett sisters are not your typical poised and posh period-drama women. They are empowered rebels who don’t look to their leading men to save them when zombies attack. These girls know how to handle a zombie apocalypse, if not a proposal.
The fight scenes are hilariously sprinkled with Austen’s flowery dialogue but the two extremes work brilliantly together thanks to amazing choreography. Austen’s dialogue naturally has a bit of a rhythm to it and the choreographed fighting parallels that rhythm, adding a new layer to the verbal sparring from the original novel.
“It’s almost like the themes and relationships in the book become heightened and really clear” James said. “Like Liz Bennett gets to beat the crap out of Darcy which is a really physical expression of all her sexual frustration.”
It’s not exactly high in nutritional value, but the movie delivers on what it set out to do and is already one of my guilty pleasure movies. It’s fun and funny and so out of the box that it works.
