Pontypool

Pontypool is a Canadian horror film directed by Bruce McDonald, adapted from a screenplay written by Tony Burgess, who also wrote Pontypool Changes Everything, the book this movie is based off of. This zombie movie takes place in a radio station in a small town in Ontario, Pontypool, where shock-jock talk radio host Grant Mazzy (played by Stephen McHattie) is shunned to because no one else will hire him anymore. Mazzy is accompanied throughout the film by his morning radio team that consists of Sydney Brair, the producer and Laurel-Ann Drummond, the technician who recently returned from Afghanistan. Sometime during the morning show, during the normal boring announcements like school cancellations, they start to get strange reports of people committing acts of the extreme violence like cannibalism and rioting around a doctor’s office. While when the radio crew first gets this news the don’t know whether to believe it and speculate that it’s an elaborate prank. The threat becomes all to real when the church that the radio station is in gets attacked by the zombies and one of the crew, Laural-Ann even gets infected. Mazzy and Sydney eventually discover that the infection is being spread through language, English in particular. From this point on the characters had to choose whether they should talk to use the radio to try and warn people or even whether they should talk to each other because of the risk of infection. They run into an infected and even stumble upon a cure. After they discover the cure (which I’m still not exactly sure what it is) the Canadian military comes and broadcasts a countdown and the films ends with Sydney kissing Mazzy at 1. This film surprised me in a couple of ways. First of all, I liked how the majority of the story takes place in the radio station. I think director McDonald does a great job of using the confined space with the talk radio atmosphere to keep the story fast paced and suspenseful. It almost seemed like a stage play to me in this way because of the small set. It also forces the audience to come up with the terrifying imagery on their own. An idea that I would have never have thought of from this movie that I think is really interesting is the idea of an infection spreading through language. It can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. For instance, I’ve read that some people think it is commenting on the English-French divide in Canada. In a broader sense I think it’s a commentary on language in general, but especially how it‘s used in Western culture. I think it’s saying language can infect our daily lives and screw things up and lead us away from our true lives, or that words have no real meaning. With an excellent lead character, a good plot, and some interesting ideas, Pontypool is a fun watch with a lot to talk about well after the credits stop rolling.

Sorry for the late post.