Halloween Horror Countdown: Pontypool

With Halloween rearing it's ugly, misshapen head that means horror films are popular again. And if you are looking for cerebral and gore, I have just the thing for you.

Pontypool is about a Canadian shock jock that his career has dwindled to him doing radio shows in the basement of a church. His day starts off like any snowy morning in Pontypool, with reports of schools and street being closed due to snow. As the day goes on, weird calls keep coming in about people committing random acts of violence, repeating the same words over and over again, and military vehicles showing up. Everything takes place within the radio studio, and more callers keep calling about the weird happenings going on in the town. Soon, a girl working for the station starts to show zombie-riffic behavior. The crew hides themselves in the radio room as she terrorizes people coming in until she just kills herself. More accounts of people like her keep coming over the lines.

Pontypool is a zombie film that still has all the gore, but does something completely different from others zombie flicks. With most zombies infecting people with bites or a disease, this zombie virus infects people with the English language. Every word is a potential landmine to become zombified. The people trapped even resort to speaking French to survive.

This film is not short on gore, nor is it short on social commentary. This film is War of the Worlds meets Night of the Living Dead, but thrusted to a new level of fear with how the "zombie virus" can travel. If you are tired of all of the same zombies movies that have become too formulaic, this is the perfect film for you. I give this film 4 and half blood-vomiting girls out of 5.

(Bringing new meaning to the phrase "White Girl Wasted")