Review #134: Pontypool (2008)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #20- Pontypool (2008)

[Note from Gabe in 2024: When writing this review in 2021 I legitimately forgot I had already written a Pontypool review five years previous. As such, this is an entirely new take and I actually think it's funny to see how similar and/or different my thoughts were.]

Now THIS is what it's like to watch an actual movie from an actual filmmaker that actually cares about the product they're putting out! Despite having seen this movie before (I've watched it several times over the years, though it's been a long time) I was more gripped and intrigued in the first two minutes of this film than I was at any point in the entire Resident Evil franchise. Everything about this movie is a perfect fit for me- I love movies set in one centralized location, I love stories about down-to-earth people dealing with something supernatural, and I've especially grown to appreciate stories about people in the broadcasting field (particularly since I got hard into podcasting five years ago!).

Speaking of which, if you haven't seen this movie but would like to get the experience without having to sit and stare at a screen, this was also made as a radio play! You can find it on Youtube, you get almost the full experience just from the audio, and it's actually about 2/3 the length of the movie. Just google "Pontypool Radio Play" and listen on your commute, you won't regret it.

I think the real strengths of this movie are the characters, and the actors. This entire movie is less about the events happening, and almost entirely about who the characters are and how they react to the events, rather than the events themselves. Stephen McHattie does a phenomenal job as Grant Mazzy, the shock jock radio host who was fired from the big city and has to slum it out in the middle of nowhere, and Lisa Houle plays Sidney Briar, his producer and counterpart. They have a great dynamic as they're clearly still adjusting to working together, and they drive the majority of the film as the events unfold around them. The premise is also fantastic, and is such a unique take on the zombie genre- what if the zombie plague was spread not through bites or infection, but through language? Through understanding concepts? Could you even figure something like that out before it was too late, and if you did, what could you even do about it? The story and characters deliver a terrifying and lonely atmosphere and experience as it becomes clear that it's unlikely anybody is going to escape from this radio studio by the end of the film.

Now, this movie isn't without flaws, though. First, the premise is interesting, but after several viewings over the years I'm not 100% sure it holds up to too much scrutiny. Every time I watch this film I come off more confused about how the plague works, and my inclination is to assume that it's all kind of a bit of nonsense, but it's so high-concept that I think it can get away with a lot of that because there's always the plausible deniability that maybe it's just too conceptual for me to grasp. Beyond that though, there's a throughline in this movie about a neighborhood woman's cat that always stuck out as not making sense and never getting resolved, and there's also a scene right in the middle of the film where they play a pre-recorded obituary segment on the radio show; however, it makes ZERO sense at that point in the story, because the obituaries are for people who have just died in the incoming zombie apocalypse. This doesn't work as it's pre-recorded (which means they would have had to know these deaths before they happened), and even if it wasn't, who's out there in the middle of a zombie mob taking rigorous notes of which zombie is killing which, and then reporting it to the radio station in real-time? I feel like I remember hearing that this scene was meant to be played at the end of the film and wasn't supposed to be an in-universe broadcast, but whatever the case, it's in the movie, and it makes not a single lick of sense.

All of that aside, though, I love this film and have spent years getting excited whenever news of a sequel gets teased, but so far nothing has actually formed.

Overall Rating: 9/10 Racist Choirs

Zombie Name Detail: According to the director, the zombies in this film are called "Conversationalists" rather than "zombies".