MUBI

Now this is an unusal approach to your regular infected/zombie fair. The setting of this film is aptly claustrophobic and surprisingly enough, it never derails into a zombie showdown with hands and teeth clawing their way through windows and floors. The film sticks to its guns and focuses on the relationships and mental states of its few principal characters. This is what captivated me for the first hour of the film and I was glued to the screen. Great cinematography, direction and performance by Stephen McHattie, whose sun-worn face is the best canvas for concern I have seen in quite some time.

Yet, the film’s ‘reveal’ is rater far-fetched and while I give Kudos to the film makers not to blame some meteor or ritual for the outbreak of violence and mass cannibalism I think the film slightly derails into philosophical ramblings and vague theories afterwards. I do not expect a big showdown by no means, like I said, keep it focused, but some sort of closure would be nice. Although, the film stayed with me for a while and I tried to figure out what really happened. On the other hand, I am not a fan of film makers who deliberately muddle and obscure the ongoings and meaning of films just to make it ‘avant-garde’, because a good story is a good story, tell it and if you don’t I will suspect that you had no rabbit in the hat in the first place.

The performances are good and the film will not make you jump out of your seat but opts for the more intelligent and subtle approach, being uncomfortably eerie and full of dread.

A bold and good approach to a worn-out genre which goes a bit off the deep end in the last 25 minutes. Still worth a watch.

I don’t want to suggest that there is nothing interesting or worthwhile about this film, but I am not sure how good I think it is. (In other words, I found myself going “pretentious?” a few times.)

As a film shot in a limited location, it is well done. I find the idea of language as a virus very interesting and I enjoyed it as a type of zombie film. There were scenes I found to be intense and clever without trying too hard. (I like the obit scene quite a bit.)

However, here is what “bugged” me: So (and this may have a spoiler, so stop now), when a character is sitting there falling apart over killing a child dressed up like a bedouin (i.e. Arab) and “what about 911?” is written on the wall right by her head…well? Police? September? Yeah…I don’t know. Why am I wondering about this? I should be able to make up my mind and definitively offer my little Internet opinion, but here we are. I’m not trying to shove something in this film when it doesn’t belong…but kill=kiss. ? Do I expect difficult ideas to be snuck in to films, so I don’t even notice? Could I do any better? No, no I could not…but that does not mean Pontypool did it right either. Language as a destructive virus…does this have to get pretentious when you discuss it?

At any rate, a difficult idea that maybe resides better in books than films?

“Pontypool” is a movie that holds a very special place in my heart. I had the very good fortune of seeing it at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last summer, almost by chance, during a Study Abroad trip. I talked some fellow travelers into going with me, we navigated our way to the Cameo Theater, and sat down with our pints to watch the movie. My heart was racing. My mind was buzzing. It was my first time ever attending a film festival, and I was absolutely giddy with excitement. After the theater’s manager quickly introduced the film and informed us that the director, Bruce McDonald, was staying after for a Q&A (I was so excited and surprised that I almost spat out my beer), the lights went down and the movie started.

On the black screen, seemingly out of nowhere, a thin electric blue sound wave popped up, accompanied by Stephen McHattie’s distinct, deep (and, the first time you hear it, pretty creepy) voice. He started running a rambling, stream-of-consciousness commentary about an old woman in town who had lost her cat. At this point, nobody in the audience knew where this was going, or what it had to do with the rest of the movie. But it was really different. It was artistic, and interesting, and pretty damn cool. I was won over from the start. From what I could tell from the audience’s reactions, they were, too.

As it turns out, that odd and artsy bit of narration at the beginning of “Pontypool” pretty much sets a catalyst for the rest of the movie. It’s a creative, funny, intriguing and impressively effective horror movie that borrows heavily from the Hitchcock “keep-’em-guessing” school. The story is that of a small regional radio station in Pontypool, a teeny little burg in Canada, and the radio host (McHattie), producer (Lisa Houle) and production assistant (Georgina Reilly) trapped there as a strange infection spreads throughout the town, sparked by an unidentifiable meme. The townspeople don’t turn into zombies, exactly, but something akin to slower, more vocal versions of the infection victims in “28 Days Later.” They repeat themselves, imitate voices, form mobs, and turn vicious. We don’t see a lot of these poor infected folks during the course of the film, but we do hear them, either over radio broadcasts or from outside the station, which makes them all the more creepy. “Pontypool” owes a huge debt to Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, which, for a medium that relies so much on visual stimuli, makes for an interesting and refreshing influence.

As a result, “Pontypool” is a strongly atmospheric movie, which jacks up the creepy factor about five notches. All the scenes take place in the dimly-lit radio station, and most of the shots rely on McHattie’s highly expressive face, which can go from world-weary to confused to fearful over the course of about 30 seconds. As an audience, we only know as much as the characters do, and get the information at the same rate and from the same places they do. There is no back story, there is no explanation. We are without a guide, which means just about anything can happen. It’s a pretty great feeling, and one that director Bruce McDonald executes well.

At the screening in Edinburgh, the film ended to cheers and applause (I probably exclaimed a little louder than I should have, but it was hard for me to control myself at that point). Bruce McDonald came forward and did the Q&A. On our way out the door afterward, my friends and I actually ran into McDonald in front of the theater, smoking a cigarette and waiting for his car. We spoke with him, talked about how much we’d loved the film, and probably came off as looking like a bunch of babbling nerds. But McDonald didn’t seem to mind. He was very genial. My two friends and I walked back to our dorms through a haze of late-night fog. It was a gorgeous evening, and we chattered all the way back, all of us having trouble believing we’d just done what we had.

It’s a little hard for me to write an objective review of “Pontypool,” since I consider it to be responsible for one of the best nights of my life. The best I can really do is describe the film and the way it made me feel when I watched it. It was a movie I wanted to see, under circumstances that were beyond ideal, and it gave me the experience I had hoped it would. I went in expecting something awesome, and that was exactly what I got. Really, I think it’s hard to require more from a movie than that.

The concept of the meme — how it transmits, spreads and self-replicates — is something that enthralled me when I first read about it in a course about language acquisition and cognition. Bruce McDonald and Tony Burgess has made the concept viral, mixed in a splash of the zombie genre and even Canadian language politics to create something clever though utterly improbable. If you can suspend your disbelief for 96 minutes, this is a highly engaging and cheeky horror romp. Stephen McHattie is one of the finest veteran Canadian actors working in film/TV. Try to listen to this film with a good sound system because he has a rich, fabulous voice that makes him a natural to play a radio jockey like Mazzy.

The film makes an effective way of pushing the boundaries of the zombie genre movies. Yes, all the elements are around and while these may look familiar upon deeply thinking about it – however, the director manages to strike something that looks fresh and ingenious.

Could there be anything more stunning a concept to make our lingua franca, the English language, turn mysteriously into the source or host of a deadly zombie virus?

Don’t want to be the spoiler here, so all I can say is that this is a good mini companion to other tense-filled vampire-inspired films like Rec and 28 Days Later.

By the way, this film may not be as big-budged as those I’ve mentioned. So better not expect much on VFX part but this surely will keep your imagination working.

William S. Burroughs-inspired zombies swarm the rural Ontario town of Pontypool. A talk radio host and his staff try report on, and then hide from, the horde.

Pontypool is idea-driven, assessing language, the nature of the media, reported fact vs. confusing reality, viral words, etc. It does a decent job, but the small budget is apparent from the substitution of ideas and described action instead of filmed action. There are more reports of zombie attacks and infections than zombies on screen. I think of it as “World of the Worlds” with zombies and Norman Mailer quotes.