Review: Pontypool (2008)

Pontypool 

IMDB rate: 6,8

Genre: Zombie

Let's start of with saying that I know that it's listed as zombie movie, but really, I'm not sure what it is. Pontypool is a tiny bit zombie like, but not in the "braaaains" kind of way.

It's a difficult movie, and I'm not sure if I understood I completely. But I do think I get the main thing of this movie, and the things I understood where actually really good.

Pontypool isn't much of a standard movie. In fact, it's a low budget one, and most of it is left to our imagination. Now, there aren't a whole lot of cases where this works out good, but in some cases they do (for example, The Blair Witch Project), and I think Pontypool is one of those good low budget movies. 

Pontypool is seen from the view of radio makers Grant Mazzy and Sidney Briar. They report all sorts of news and talk a lot about things. This time though they have a weird breaking news report, a doctor office is flooded with people that keep repeating stuff and attack others.

The main thing of this movie is that people become Zombie like by understanding (or not) a word. They say a word, and keep repeating it, until the moment that it becomes the weirdest word ever (we all have this sometimes). Then they start getting aggressive because they can't figure out what the word means, and start chewing through their cheeks in some sort of way to literally put the word in someone's mouth. 

Kinda confusing, I know. And believe me, I'm still not sure if I understood this movie properly. Apparently this only happens in the English language, so it's some sort of criticism to the English language. The English language is literally infected in this case. 

Luckily, the movie plays in Canada, so some people are able to speak French to each other, instead of English. 

Now, what was good about this movie was mainly the talking. We never saw anything of what happened outside, but we got to know about these things through communication. Grant talks to his reporter on the phone, while on radio and we never saw what actually happened, but it was so incredibly tensive. Such a good scene. 

When the virus starts to hit the radio center we finally see it happen close, the radio girl (who looks an awfully lot like Anna Farris) gets infected and somehow needs to hear words. She starts running into the sound booth, unsuccessfully. This is really a brutal scene, because she gets more and more injured. Finally, she dies because 'she couldn't find her 'cure for words' or something.

I already mentioned that I was a bit confused by the movie, not too strange since it really is a difficult one. But somehow I was still impressed by it. Man, the goosebumps I got from hearing what was happening with the reporter were huge. And I didn't even see anything! How brilliant is that?!

Besides the confusing storyline there was another weird moment, some mature guy who was also infected made baby noises. Or better said, he called for his 'Momma' in a baby voice. It was creepy as hell, but it seemed useless for the movie to be honest, because it was never explained, and it only happened once unfortunately. 

I really recommend watching Pontypool. It was a surprising and a fresh movie. Good acting and the voice of Stephen McHattie (Grant Mazzy) is very soothing. Even though I thought it was a confusing movie I still liked it, it was something very different from what I've seen before.

My personal rate: 7/10