Pontypool

[SecondTalon]

So, if I paid attention to Metacritic (54) and IMDB (6.4), I'd have probably skipped this one. Instead, oh wise and powerful Netflix was all "We guess that you'll watch this and fucking love it more than you love your mother because what has she done for you lately? Exactly."

So what is it? Well, I'm going to say that it's probably not for everyone. It's basically a low budget zombie film making oh so clever commentary about Talk Radio, but you know what they do with their low budget zombie flick? They barely have zombies in the thing.

And it works.

The setup is that there's a radio station in a small town, and you never get in exact detail what Grant Mazzy's backstory is, but you get enough bits to figure it out - he's a shock jock of sorts, some Talk Radio guy who, maybe like Don Imus or something, probably said something on air he shouldn't have and got fired and took what might be the only job he could find - working the radio station of some small town in Ontario who's populace is far more interested in School Closings than there are in Mazzy's musings. So he's trying to figure out how his Take No Prisoners approach to radio can work in this setting while he's still learning everything.... like the fact that that it's an open joke that the radio station's "Air One" reporter is a guy in a station wagon who sits on a hill and looks at the town to give traffic reports.. only no one told him that until well into the job.

Anyway, some zombie outbreak style thing starts to happen and they start getting phonecalls describing the happenings, so outside of one scene later on, the entire zombie outbreak takes place pretty much off camera, and you only have telephone reports. The radio station itself is so out of the loop that when the BBC calls them to talk to the guy who broke the story, the BBC reporter gives them more information than they knew, and they pretty much can tell him nothing.

Basically - it looks to me like the writer realized they'd never have that great of a budget, so rather than doing the typical terrible looking zombies in a wide variety of low-budget locations with mid-range actors, they blew their cash wad on a handful of pretty well-cast people and one really neat location. Also, I like that it taking place in Pontypool (near the border of Quebec) is a plot point.

So if the whole "trapped in a building trying to figure out what's going on and no real "action" taking place, just lots of dramatic conversation" appeals to you, huzzah! If it doesn't then oh god are you going to be bored out of your mind.

[LE4dGOLEM]

I really enjoyed it, but the people I was watching it with I think expected a more run-of-the-mill zombie movie, and kept expecting it to "get going" with zombie-action. But that's not what the film is really about, and that's what makes it interesting.

[SecondTalon]

Yeah, I think so long as you go into it knowing it's going to be a low-key affair, with a slow burn on the horror and no "RAR IMMA MONSTA!" jump scenes really, then you'll dig it.

If you're expecting 28 Days Later : Radio Station Edition, you'll be bored out of your mind.
(And yeah, the spoiler will both not make sense and spoil things if you haven't seen it. Because it's a spoiler.)

Spoiler:

I also really dig the constant repetition of sounds and syllables and similar sounding words as the movie goes on, pretty much not letting you be sure that they're not infected and never being sure if the cure actually works. Nor knowing if it really only does apply to English, or if French is getting infected too. Apparently I need to go watch the credits as I turned it off before they got going, and apparently stuff happened. D'oh.

[najradanti]

i watched this last night and i liked it a lot. i'm not usually into horror movies, at least not of the sort with lots of jump scenes and gore, but the style of this one was really enjoyable for me. to me it was far creepier and more engaging keeping most of the outbreak off-cam and watching them try to figure it out.

the method of virus transmission also really interested me.

Spoiler:

and on a personal level made me really curious if/how it would affect me if this happened, since i am deaf and also don't speak orally, and i wonder how that would affect transmission. i mean if it is only the english language that is affected, then would it be untransmissable to me since i'd have no idea what anyone was saying to me ever? and if it is other languages then maybe i'd only be affected by people who could sign. and even if i did get infected could i only pass it on to other people who sign, since nobody else would understand signs and i don't use oral language? not that there is any way to answer this really but it was interesting to speculate!

[pseudoidiot]

Just finished watching this. Thanks for bringing it to my attention! I very much enjoyed it!

[The Mighty Thesaurus]

I've been telling people to watch this for years, man. The coda is definitely worth watching

[philsov]

I checked it out this weekend; it was pretty good and the description of being trapped in a building with only incoming phone calls to figure it out is pretty accurate. I liked the transmission vector, too.

The very end with the black and white was rather left-fieldish, though. Had the normal ending occurred with the radio reports during credits I think it would've been a better ending.