Pontypool 
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

Canada, NR, 95 m, 2008
Directed by Bruce McDonald. Stars Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly, et al.

Based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess and directed by Bruce McDonald (The Tracey Fragments), Pontypool is one of the most intelligent, innovative, unpredictable, unnerving, and downright sidesplitting zombie flicks I’ve seen since Shaun of the Dead. Gorehounds should bear in mind, though, that this isn’t just another blood and guts blowout; it’s a thinking man’s creature feature, like Signs. There’s only a smattering of the oogy stuff and we really don’t see much of the flesh eaters until the final act, but McDonald is more interested in rattling us than disgusting us. (He makes good use of Hitchcock’s playbook, which is something I wish his contemporaries—especially the infamous Splat Pack—would start doing.) He ratchets up the tension slowly, methodically, and before we know it, we’re caught in his web and screaming pitifully like David Hedison in The Fly. What makes Pontypool such a nail-biter is that the action is confined to a single set—a radio station in the small, nippy town of Pontypool, Canada—and we’re no clearer on who or what’s to blame for the apocalyptic scenario that’s taking shape beyond its walls than our luckless protagonists are. This is Talk Radio meets The Mist.

The weird events in Pontypool, which for no apparent reason takes place on Valentine’s Day, are seen through the bloodshot eyes of the radio station’s morning personality, Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), a whisky-swilling, cowboy-hat-wearing cuss who appears to have been fashioned after Don Imus (though his dark attire and even darker worldview recalls Talk Radio’s Barry Champlain). He’s tired of freezing his keester off in this one reindeer town, and he’s pushing his bungling agent to find him a greener pasture (that is, a bigger market) in which to do his incendiary shtick. Though his young, hotshot engineer, Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly), thinks he’s the one and only, he can’t seem to get any respect from his producer, Sydney (Lisa Houle, McHattie’s real-life better-half), who wants him to refrain from his nutty rants and stick to what the local yokels want: weather reports. There’s a nasty winter storm moving into the area, so the field reporter, Ken Loney (Rick Roberts), is calling in regularly with traffic updates from his “Sunshine Chopper.” (Sydney has neglected to tell Grant that the “Sunshine Chopper” is as phony as the Hitler Diaries; Ken is actually sitting atop a hill in his broken down Dodge Dart and playing sound effects.) But one of Ken’s reports this morning throws Grant and his staff for a loop: The offices of Dr. John Mendez, a local fixture who’s been under investigation of late for writing unnecessary prescriptions, are being stormed by a huge, unruly mob. According to Ken, the rioters, all of whom are chanting utter gibberish, keep piling into the building until it literally breaks apart in “an explosion of people.” Other eyewitness accounts of similarly strange goings-on around town soon follow, such as one that involves a family of four being trapped in their car beneath “a mountain of people” mimicking the sound of windshield wipers. At first I thought these phone calls might be part of a practical joke whipped up by Sydney to take the wind out of Grant’s sails, and then I started to wonder if Grant was developing cabin fever like Jack Torrance in The Shining and just hallucinating all of this stuff. But when a BBC television talk show host calls in and blindsides Grant with questions about the military’s attempt to quarantine Pontypool, we come to see that McDonald isn’t fucking with us—he’s crafting the most unbearably intense doomsday pic since Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. But what is giving rise to this possible pandemic? Well, Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak), who has ducked into the station to elude the babbling hordes, reveals that the virus isn’t transmitted through fecal contact or sexual congress or playing Twister, but rather through words. Yes, words. And what’s truly unsettling is that it could be any word: smile, jellybean, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. But it’s not simply hearing the word that brings on the infection; it’s the understanding of the word. So, now it’s up to Grant to reach out to his radio audience and try to instruct them on how not to make sense of the words they hear. A thankless task, to be sure, especially when the words he’s sending out might be carrying the bug. 

As Grant Mazzy, McHattie is simply superb. At times, he looks and sounds an awful lot like Lance Henriksen, while at other times he might put you in the mind of Hugh Laurie from TV’s “House.” The faces he puts on when reacting to one bizarre piece of business or another are priceless, and, like Eric Bogosian, he has a great radio voice. It gives the character of Grant an extra layer of authenticity, something McDonald is apparently a stickler for. The mechanics of radio production are accurately depicted; you can tell that this director has done his homework. (It’s only fitting that he put together the radio dramatization of Pontypool, which is largely an abridgement of the film’s soundtrack but with a radically different ending.) Though the story’s space is appropriately limited, you never get the feeling that McDonald is struggling to keep the images dynamic, which is what Oliver Stone seemed to be doing sometimes in Talk Radio. McDonald’s cinematographer, Miroslaw Baszak (he shot Romero’s Land of the Dead), is a genius: He keeps the very talky action visually compelling without ever drawing attention to his technique. Everything in Pontypool flows beautifully. It’s easily one of the best films of the year. 

November 24, 2009 

© Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.