Director: Bruce McDonald
Writer: Tony Burgess
Photography: Miroslaw Baszak
Music: Claude Foisy
Editor: Jeremiah Munce
Cast: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly, Rick Roberts, Hrant Alianak
In most of the zombie movies from the George Romero era (since Night of the Living Dead in 1968), foundational explanations have tended toward viruses, environmental toxins including radiation, and/or other pathogens. Pontypool—which I never think of as a zombie movie, even though I have to admit they're all over the place in the last third—runs instead with an exceedingly high-concept twist, claiming that the virus is carried by and communicable through language and meaning. It's trippy stuff, especially in our slightly more informed pandemic era, and it's not the only place this movie shows a willingness to go wide.
It's basically a one-set piece, virtually all of it taking place in the broadcasting studio of a radio station in the fictional small town of Pontypool in Ontario, Canada. Stephen McHattie is Grant Mazzy, a washed-up talk-radio shock jock who has landed in this outpost. It's Valentine's Day, when folks in the northlands are exhausted by winter and starting to show snappish cabin fever symptoms. We know it's a cold bleak exterior out there, but we never see much of it. From inside this church basement radio station, we learn that some kind of bizarre outbreak has begun in Pontypool, with incidents of random and extreme violence as yet unexplained. Mazzy and his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and crew work with the scanty updates coming in from the wires and other reports to try to make sense of what's going on for themselves and their listeners and us.
In most of the zombie movies from the George Romero era (since Night of the Living Dead in 1968), foundational explanations have tended toward viruses, environmental toxins including radiation, and/or other pathogens. Pontypool—which I never think of as a zombie movie, even though I have to admit they're all over the place in the last third—runs instead with an exceedingly high-concept twist, claiming that the virus is carried by and communicable through language and meaning. It's trippy stuff, especially in our slightly more informed pandemic era, and it's not the only place this movie shows a willingness to go wide.
It's basically a one-set piece, virtually all of it taking place in the broadcasting studio of a radio station in the fictional small town of Pontypool in Ontario, Canada. Stephen McHattie is Grant Mazzy, a washed-up talk-radio shock jock who has landed in this outpost. It's Valentine's Day, when folks in the northlands are exhausted by winter and starting to show snappish cabin fever symptoms. We know it's a cold bleak exterior out there, but we never see much of it. From inside this church basement radio station, we learn that some kind of bizarre outbreak has begun in Pontypool, with incidents of random and extreme violence as yet unexplained. Mazzy and his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and crew work with the scanty updates coming in from the wires and other reports to try to make sense of what's going on for themselves and their listeners and us.
Government reports are sketchy, confusing, and conflicting. At one point the broadcast is cut into by an unknown agent for a strange message in French, which ends, "Don't translate this into English." At a high point in the action, even BBC News has called in requesting information in their prim BBC tones. Pontypool divides its time equally between working up a head of steam on the unfolding mystery / suspense / zombie plot and making fun of small-town radio operations. Ken Loney, the traffic reporter, for example, claims to be reporting from a helicopter, but really he's just sitting on top of the high point in the region playing sound effects. Why does an obscure small town need a traffic reporter, let alone one riding a chopper? Don't ask stupid questions. You can almost feel the movie glaring back at you when you do.
Yet Rick Roberts as Loney's voice gets some of the most effective scenes here, just his voice crackling on a phone line, reporting extraordinary details and impossible audio, as he cracks apart from the things he has witnessed. You can feel the sources going all the way back to Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio broadcast. But Pontypool never stays overly serious for long, happy to reach for the next gag, as the tone zigs and zags constantly. One of my favorite plot points is when an expert who can explain what's going on, or at least speculate with some credibility, enters the movie literally by unexpectedly climbing in a window at the radio station. "Excuse me?!" says Sydney at his appearance. It's Dr. John Mendez (Hrant Alianak). And why is he there? To explain things, you idiot. Shut up and listen. When he's filled us in all he can, and may have picked up the virus himself, he exits again the same way, awkwardly crawling through the window. Director Bruce McDonald and screenwriter Tony Burgess plainly had a lot of fun putting this together.
McHattie has a voice made for radio, and also a face as the old joke goes. His comic timing is often perfect. He's funny over and over in surprising ways. It's basically up to him to carry this whole thing and he's a little spindly for it but not bad, with his grizzled demeanor and cowboy getup and booming aggrieved voice. Pontypool never really gets into Grant Mazzy's shock jock persona, only implying it's there at the edges. On the surface he's more of a deluded has-been or never-was who is all wrong for this Ontario backwater.
Or maybe all right, in that WKRP manner of radio station as collection of affable semi-hip incompetents (this one, by the way, is CLSY in Canada, and reminded me a lot of the original KFAI in Minneapolis). Lisa Houle is McHattie's wife in real life, which I just learned now. It surprises me—they seemed an unlikely couple to me when the movie starts shoving them together—but it may also account for the warm chemistry that really suffuses the whole picture. It implies a lot of horrific violence but never gets into details, for example. We hear a gruesome fight going down in one scene, but the camera never bothers to pivot over and show it to us.
Pontypool is just for fun, with its ideas and gags and bravado, full of tricks and gimmicks. You even have to follow the audio during the end credits for further daylight on the extremely ambiguous and arbitrary wrap-up. Pontypool has some neat pop linguistics ideas about language and meaning and a great sense of blocking and timing in confined space. In a way it almost feels wholesome—in the way so many Twilight Zone episodes do now too—and that might be another one of its great unexpected pleasures. For a double feature try matching it up with The Vast of Night.
Yet Rick Roberts as Loney's voice gets some of the most effective scenes here, just his voice crackling on a phone line, reporting extraordinary details and impossible audio, as he cracks apart from the things he has witnessed. You can feel the sources going all the way back to Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio broadcast. But Pontypool never stays overly serious for long, happy to reach for the next gag, as the tone zigs and zags constantly. One of my favorite plot points is when an expert who can explain what's going on, or at least speculate with some credibility, enters the movie literally by unexpectedly climbing in a window at the radio station. "Excuse me?!" says Sydney at his appearance. It's Dr. John Mendez (Hrant Alianak). And why is he there? To explain things, you idiot. Shut up and listen. When he's filled us in all he can, and may have picked up the virus himself, he exits again the same way, awkwardly crawling through the window. Director Bruce McDonald and screenwriter Tony Burgess plainly had a lot of fun putting this together.
McHattie has a voice made for radio, and also a face as the old joke goes. His comic timing is often perfect. He's funny over and over in surprising ways. It's basically up to him to carry this whole thing and he's a little spindly for it but not bad, with his grizzled demeanor and cowboy getup and booming aggrieved voice. Pontypool never really gets into Grant Mazzy's shock jock persona, only implying it's there at the edges. On the surface he's more of a deluded has-been or never-was who is all wrong for this Ontario backwater.
Or maybe all right, in that WKRP manner of radio station as collection of affable semi-hip incompetents (this one, by the way, is CLSY in Canada, and reminded me a lot of the original KFAI in Minneapolis). Lisa Houle is McHattie's wife in real life, which I just learned now. It surprises me—they seemed an unlikely couple to me when the movie starts shoving them together—but it may also account for the warm chemistry that really suffuses the whole picture. It implies a lot of horrific violence but never gets into details, for example. We hear a gruesome fight going down in one scene, but the camera never bothers to pivot over and show it to us.
Pontypool is just for fun, with its ideas and gags and bravado, full of tricks and gimmicks. You even have to follow the audio during the end credits for further daylight on the extremely ambiguous and arbitrary wrap-up. Pontypool has some neat pop linguistics ideas about language and meaning and a great sense of blocking and timing in confined space. In a way it almost feels wholesome—in the way so many Twilight Zone episodes do now too—and that might be another one of its great unexpected pleasures. For a double feature try matching it up with The Vast of Night.
Speaking for the horror squeamish, kindly of you to offer a 'wholesome' horror double-bill recommendation for Halloween weekend. -Skip
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