Pontypool (2008)
Average Rating: 6.6/10
Reviews Counted: 79
Fresh: 65 | Rotten: 14
Witty and restrained but still taut and funny, this Pontypool is a different breed of low-budget zombie film.
Average Rating: 5.7/10
Critic Reviews: 15
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 5
Witty and restrained but still taut and funny, this Pontypool is a different breed of low-budget zombie film.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 5,574
My Rating
Movie Info
Bruce McDonald, critically acclaimed director of The Tracey Fragments, teams with author Tony Burgess to adapt Burgess' own novel about a small town in the grip of a mysterious frenzy. It may be Valentine's Day, but for caustic radio personality Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) that's just another reason to be miserable. Mazzy used to be a certified radio superstar, but working in Pontypool is a far shot from working in the big city. Today, however, as Mazzy prepares for his regular routine of
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Cast
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Stephen McHattie
D.J. Grant Mazzy -
Lisa Houle
Sydney Briar -
Georgina Reilly
Laurel Ann Drummond -
Hrant Alianak
Dr. Mendez
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All Critics (80) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (66) | Rotten (14) | DVD (2)
This low-budget picture is a little too claustrophobic, and it grows tedious. The ominous, overbearing musical score tries but fails to jack up the tension.
Top CriticThis cerebral horror movie plays Scrabble with the genre's cinematic lingo.
However shrewdly contrived to keep its budget low, Pontypool, set almost entirely in a basement radio station, is a zombie flick sans bite.
For a while, this claustrophobic little horror movie is a dark little treat.
If you're a devotee of the deranged mind of Canadian indie auteur Bruce McDonald, then I can just tell you that he's made a horror movie (kind of) and that Pontypool is it.
A horror flick that's all talk and (almost) no action? The risk pays off better than you'd think.
Alarmingly intelligent and deeply disorienting, Pontypool plays as a radically different film upon subsequent viewings, its metaphor-filled dialogue seeming to shift and alter in meaning with every scene.
A winning combination of shuddery suspense and intelligent observations.
As a horror fan, this high-minded Talk Radio of the Living Dead left me as cold as a Pontypool winter.
Its a mighty strange beast, an intellectual B-movie that offers equal parts semiotics and projectile gore.
Laurie Anderson would be proud: language is a virus in [this] zombie(-esque) thriller set almost entirely within the walls of a basement radio station.
Interesting zombie flick. A little too claustrophobic with all of the scenes in a makeshift radio station. Too much description and not enough action, almost like War of the World's radio broadcast. Still, worth watching once. Paul Chambers, CNN.
This year Canada's PONTYPOOL ranks as high as any United States science fiction films I have seen.
An entertaining cerebral chiller.
Compellingly apocalyptic.
An original take on genre movies of its kind.
Inventive and genuinely suspenseful, this is a welcome addition to the expanding zombie/virus canon.
This unsettlingly quirky account of semiological breakdown and small-town apocalypse plays like My Winnipeg for fans of intellectual horror. Pontypool is as astonishing as it is original, and amply repays multiple viewings.
It's always an unexpected bonus in a zombie film to find the brains evident in the screenplay rather than splattered all over the scenery.
An utterly baffling and stunningly boring zombie horror thriller.
Tight as a drum and the most inventive spin on a zombie-plague premise in years.
An immersive film built on inference and interrupted signals rather than cheap shock-jock tactics. But the question remains: why the hell didn't they call it Dead Air?
Ignore the shaky tongue-tied opening fifteen minutes; when Pontypool gets its words in order it reminds you how much creepy fun can be had in keeping the horror tantalisingly offscreen.
Audience Reviews for Pontypool
Super Reviewer
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- D.J. Grant Mazzy: Do you really wanna provide a genocide with elevator music?
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Ultimately, Pontypool's highly original and undeniably loopy concept/ commentary (a zombie-like virus is spread through certain words of the English language) is it's marginal undoing, as most of the tension and paranoia of earlier scenes dissolve through prolonged and confused explanations as to how the plague works in the first place. I'm still not sure, but neither are the characters in the film so I can buy that; what I can't fully buy is the tonal shift that reduces the morbid fun of what came before it.
Luckily, not even my major gripe could dissipate my enjoyment that much. "Pontypool" is still a really good film, and a fresh take on both the horror and psychological thriller genres. It could have been great (as indicated by the stellar first half), but sometimes a flawed original speaks volumes. In this light, "Ponypool" is well worth seeing.