Forum Overview :: Peter Molyneux's The Movies :: Pontypool

[quote name="Fullofkittens"]As zombie movies go, it's pretty good. I'm sick to death of zombie movies and it didn't trigger my fuck-not-this-shit-again alarms until very late in the movie. The first half is rock solid: great setup, good dialogue, good performances. A small local radio station starts hearing reports of what seems to be some kind of zombie apocalypse where the zombieism manifests itself first by aphasia in the victims: they can't think of the right word for something or they get stuck on a word. Stuff gets creepy & fun when the zombies start mimicking baby sounds and teakettles. Then all the air escapes from the film when a new character implausibly shows up out of the blue. It's... very dumb that this person shows up. The movie does not recover, firstly because this character's sudden appearance is so stupid and adds nothing, 2nd because the implied reason he needs to be in the film is that he "explains" the nature of the zombie virus, which is dumb as shit and basically makes no sense, and thirdly because he throws into relief that this is essentially a 3-person stage play up until he shows up. It felt claustrophobic up until that moment, but afterward it feels stagebound. Surprisingly it was adapted from a book, not a play. It ends without having solved the typical zombie movie problem of how to properly end a movie about an apocalypse, but that doesn't bother me. It is too bad that it starts so strong and ends so meh, though. Honorable mention goes out to the three actors that mostly carry the film, especially Stephen McHattie and his amazing radio voice.[/quote]