Review: Pontypool

Pontypool

OPENING: 05/29/2009

STUDIO: IFC Films

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Shut up or die.

Opening Statement
From straight out of left field comes the weird and wonderful Pontypool, an unexpected foray into horror filmmaking by venerable Canadian director Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo, Highway 61, The Tracey Fragments). A tense and quirky zombie thriller set in rural Ontario, I would be willing to wager you’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Unless you study linguistics and semiotics at a university level, that is.

Facts of the Case
After shock jock Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie, Shoot ‘Em Up, Justice League) gets unceremoniously booted from the big city airwaves, he finds himself working at CLSY radio in the small rural town of Pontypool. His new workspace is the basement of the small town’s only church. What begins as another boring day of school bus cancellations, obituaries and missing cat reports soon unfolds into a genuine on-air catastrophe.

Bizarre reports of violence, strange speech patterns and general pandemonium begin to reach the ears of producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle, Emily of New Moon) and tech Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly, The Dark Room), but nothing shows up on the news wire. Unable to verify the authenticity of the information, CLSY continues on its morning routine, slowly becoming aware of the growing chaos outside their door. Even more inexplicable, the confusing, babbling townsfolk seem to be infecting each other with insanity through the English language itself! Do Grant and his crew stay indoors and hope for safe rescue? Or are they somehow contributing horribly to the downfall of Pontypool by staying on the air?

The Evidence
Bruce McDonald is a director of note in Canada, but has made little impact outside of the Great White North. That might change after the outrageous Pontypool, a horror film as intellectually clever as it is creepy. The film quantifies everything fantastic about independent filmmaking in Canada: relatively unknown actors, small sets, low budgets, quirky humor and ambitious ideas. And of course, the film ultimately never even gets distributed here at home—but that’s Canadian cinema for you. How fortuitous that after a strong showing in 2008 at the Toronto International Film Festival, IFC Films acquired rights to the film in North America, because Pontypool bears all the hallmarks of being the next great cult Canadian horror flick to invade America. With any luck, horror fans will be stacking this one up alongside successful expatriates like Ginger Snaps and Cube.

Adapted by author Tony Burgess from his original novel “Pontypool Changes Everything”, Pontypool is not your average horror film. There is little in the way of blood or violence, there are few special effects, nothing in the way of “boo” moments. The majority of the film takes place in a single room, the basement of a church / makeshift radio station, which creates ample amounts of dramatic tension by sheer isolation. As the DJ vainly tries to keep the show going, small snippets of terrifying information begin flooding into the station: eyewitness reports of mob attacks, confused and stuttering callers making no sense, unconfirmed reports of military forces surrounding and quarantining the town. For the three hapless protagonists stuck at the switchboard, they can’t confirm or deny the information, and can’t get up to go outside and look out the window, which may very well be the most honest and smartest-written horror film script ever put to paper. For once, the characters don’t go into the dark room, don’t go into the empty streets unarmed, don’t run up the staircase chased by the monster—they hide like big babies. I’ve waited so long for that kind of refreshing honesty in horror films, I almost wept out of gratefulness. Cut off from the outside world, the paranoia and dread creep in as the city grows eerily quiet, then alarmingly destructive. No doubt it was a budget choice to refrain from showing hordes of zombies sweeping through the streets, and in any other genre, that kind of cheap-out might not fly, but in the world of horror filmmaking? The only thing worse than seeing the horrible monster outside your door is not seeing the horrible monster outside your door, and being too terrified to open it. The audience never leaves the room; we stay right beside them every numbing second, piecing together the mystery in slow, agonizing steps.

As for the mystery itself, accepting for the moment that poor Pontypool is overrun by swarms of deranged and zombie-esque townsfolk looking to murder the embattled radio crew, the explanation as to why this is happening is the real fun in Pontypool. It is also the point at which audiences will seriously need to roll a saving throw against their own brain. The more details this review goes into as to the specifics about the nature of the “infection”, the less satisfying the film will feel, so forgive our intentional vagueness. Suffice it to say, no horror film has ever tried an explanation this cerebral before to explain zombie attacks. Clever eyes watching may note a well-worn paperback copy of Neal Stephenson’s seminal science-fiction novel “Snow Crash” sitting on a desk during one sequence in Pontypool. This is a deliciously wicked nod of the head to a literary classic that first introduced the ideas of semiotic-based diseases into the nerd collective. If you’ve read the book, you no doubt have a very good idea of what I speak of. For everyone else, it should be noted that the ideas put forth in this film aren’t particularly new, but in the world of horror cinema, they are as fresh as farm produce. Linguistics and semiotics make for a tricky horror film subject, and to my knowledge this is the first film I’ve seen brave enough to try and sell wordplay as a particularly horrifying movie villain. As ideas go, I admit… it’s pretty out there. It takes some time to wrap your head around it, even for those familiar with the ideas put forth. Still, it’s amusing how easily audiences are prepared to accept that our neighbors will go zombie and eat our skin, but not that words have any particular power. One horror trope gets a free pass from Logic City, while the other gets pulled over by the thought police. Go figure.

Despite the relatively small cast of unknowns (at least on the North American stage) Pontypool’s cast turn out magnificent performances. Veteran television and character actor Stephen McHattie is perfectly cast as the grizzled washed-up DJ, his baritone growling make for a near-perfect radio announcer drawl, so convincing that you’d think it was his actual profession. Lisa Houle hits a perfect balance between sardonic disbelief and terrified leading lady panic, her face dancing with confusion and emotion. The chemistry works well between McHattie and Houle, due in part no doubt to the fact that they are married and have a child together in real life. Georgina Reilly plays the wide-eyed teenager at the switchboard, giving a reserved and quirky performance that suits the tone of the film well. She wasn’t on my radar before, but she is now. Young, pretty and talented, I expect to see a lot more of her in the years to come.

As amusing an idea as having a zombie invasion from the perspective of the dude in the sound booth reporting on it, Pontypool subverts nearly every expectation. We expect violence; we get intellectual ruminations on the nature of language. We expect doors to be kicked in a la George Romero, with zombies slowly, methodically creeping in, but get eerie silences and scratches, low shuffling about outside, (almost) always out of sight. We get a hero in the form of a drunken disc jockey that saves the world—maybe—not with a chainsaw and a shotgun, or a cricket bat, but with a microphone. We even get a satisfying amount of tongue-in-cheek humor interjected along the way, just enough to lubricate the dramatic gears without making things goofy. And you’ll never look at French-Canadians the same way again.

A brilliant film from start to finish, Pontypool is an introspective David Cronenberg thriller by way of Shaun of the Dead, a psychological head-twisting gore film without any gore; a nail-biting drama with a premise so unique to cinema that seems so dumb at first, but so amazing after the credits roll. It also may be the best film that Bruce McDonald has made thus far. As a special bonus to myself, I find this movie particularly amusing because I live a few hours from Pontypool, and the idea of zombies overrunning the town is especially delicious to a sick, twisted fellow like me.

Hey, I’m not proud. But Pontypool should be.

Closing Statement
Let it never be said again that talk radio has little cultural value. If anything can break Bruce McDonald out of Canada and onto the international stage, Pontypool is the film. Innovative, thrilling, ingenious and wholly unique, this is a fabulous twist on a bloated and clichéd horror genre, a shot of cinematic adrenaline to a stale and tired subset of filmmaking overly obsessed with CGI, blood and gore.

Pontypool opens in limited release in North America on May 29th, but can be accessed through IFC On-Demand beginning May 27. See it. You won’t be sorry.

Sorry. You won’t be sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry!

The Verdict
I’m okay. I’m simple. Sorry. No, simple. I mean, simply story. The story, the… sorry. The story is sorry. I’m stable now, stable. Stable. I’m… I’m staple now.

9/10

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