Critic Reviews

The result should appeal to Austen aficionados and horror hounds alike—which is not a sentence you get to write too often.

Director Burr Steers...does a nifty job of rocketing from period-piece romance to gory bloodshed, with sprinkles of dark humor here and there.

What is most impressive about the final film, adapted for the screen and directed by Burr Steers, is that it gets the Pride and Prejudice side of things right, and that's what matters most.

For all the splurch and head-lopping, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is monotonal. It turns its action sequences into a noisy blur.

The zombie scenes are startling, but only PG-13 horrifying. That will probably be just fine with most Jane Austen fans.

Writer-director Burr Steers delivers a screen mash-up that’s generally done in the right, warped spirit. It lampoons Austen cleverly enough at points, without winking any harder than needed.

The whole thing, for me, never got past its one-joke premise. Zombies in Austenland! Funny! But … then what? Why, then … More hacking and whacking and cutting and cleaving and heaving (as in bosoms in those Empire-waist frocks); it’s all a horror fan could wish for.

The zombification of Austen’s material is frequently funny and sometimes clever, but the film stumbles hard when it loses sight of just how ridiculous it is.

The novelty of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies wears thin in the last third: How is it that the threat of a zombie apocalypse is always more thrilling than the event itself? But Riley and James help carry the picture to the finish line.

For the most part a surprisingly fun, bloody take on Jane Austen’s classic – but it does turn stale as the final reckoning approaches.