Pontypool (2009)

Original Release Date: March 6, 2009
Run Time: 95 minutes

When spending a few moments recently aimlessly surfing the online zombie boards and forums, as I tend to do in the vast majority of my ever-dwindling free time, I kept stumbling across the same word, a word that didn’t make any sense to me: Pontypool. It’s a funny-sounding word, and it’s also the title of a zombie movie that had generated a good amount of buzz from the people that had seen it.

Well, you know me: if there’s a new zombie movie/book/game/comic out there that has a chance to entertain me, I’m gonna do my darndest to go out and find it. After a quick little search, I was able to snag a copy from a media-swapping site I am a member of, and when the disc arrived I popped it in, eager to see what I had in store for me during my first viewing.

“Pontypool” is a very different kind of zombie film, and I have to give its creators credit for giving the world a movie that feels so familiar yet so unique. Based on Tony Burgess’ novel Pontypool Changes Everything, Burgess himself helped adapt this tale of a small Canadian town, the titular Pontypool, that over the course of one day endures a maddening and frightening outbreak that turns its residents into violent killers.