Well, the January slog is done and with it comes the potential for a new year of great films. February brings us a new Coen Brothers film, the foul-mouthed superhero Deadpool, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

What is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Well, it’s a spoof on Jane Austin’s classic novel with a zombie apocalypse thrown in there for good measure. What the final product ends up being is wonderfully strange, but nothing terribly memorable. This is one movie that definitely won’t be on anyone’s “Best movies of 2016” list, but it’s one that is worth checking out if you want to bridge that week between this movie’s release and Deadpool.
This movie throws you into a Victorian-era England, with the same ideals and beliefs they held back then, but almost everyone is a trained zombie killer. Our main character Elizabeth is a head strong woman that doesn’t want to be married off just so she can be well off for her whole life. She wants to find a man who loves her for her and doesn’t make her sit down her zombie killing swords just to become a housewife. Along with that, the zombie hoards are getting bigger and threatening everyone in the English countryside.
The movie has some definite positives. There’s something oddly satisfying about the absurdity of the story. Seeing these well-mannered women go into full zombie killing mode is a blast, and there’s a few really great performances in here too. Notably, Matt Smith (Dr. Who) as a hilariously naïve rich man try to marry one of the girls in this movie, and Lily James (last year’s Cinderella) plays Elizabeth and pulls the strangeness of this movie off very well. Going from a refined woman to a hardened killer at the drop of a hat.
The action is both positive and a negative here for me. It’s heavily edited. You can tell the camera cuts away before anything really graphic happens so the movie can preserve the PG-13 rating. I’m personally hoping there’s an unrated cut that comes out with the Blu-ray later this year.
In terms of negatives, it does feel a bit long at times and the movie has some very shocking changes to the tone here. One minute, people are talking and then someone might get their head blown off or eaten by a zombie, then it goes back to talking. It’s hard to describe, but there were times that it felt like the movie didn’t know exactly what it wanted to be.
This is a hard movie to tie down. It’s got an absolutely insane premise, but that works to the movie’s advantage. Some sharp changes in tone, the heavily edited action scenes, and the sometimes long stretches of dialogue bring it down too. I’d say if you’re bored, have gotten all your homework done, and have some extra money; go see it. It’s a fun and ridiculous romp that is surprisingly better than I thought it was going to be. It has its flaws but is a fun way to start February off. Getting you that zombie fixes before The Walking Dead returns in a few weeks.

Rating: 3.5/5 Not an award winner by any means, but enough fun to get you out the January funk.