Film Review: PONTYPOOL (2008)

 PONTYPOOL (2008) Canada 1hr 33mins

Director: Bruce McDonald

 "It's not the end of the world folks... it's just the end of the day." - Grant Mazzy

"Oh God, you're gonna eat me soon aren't you?? It's ok... you be the killer. I don't wanna be the killer." - a very drunk Sydney Briar.

"I've seen things today that are going to ruin the rest of my natural life!"- Ken Loney

Canadian born director Bruce McDonald and author, screenplay writer and fellow Canadian Tony Burgess have teamed up to bring us PONTYPOOL. Adapted from Burgess' novel "PONTYPOOL CHANGES EVERYTHING" (1998), it is a movie creation that brings the viewer a totally new zombie concept. This quiet and eerie movie takes place almost entirely in the basement of a radio station and is an all out attack on your senses. Incorporating very little on screen violence, with a claustrophobic setting and evidence that the world is on the brink of destruction, going completely bonkers with a few very subtle dubious gags thrown in for good measure.

The story follows Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) a disgraced DJ with a "shock jock" persona. Fired from his last gig and now hosting the very early morning show in small town Pontypool, Canada. His station manager Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and technical assistant Laurel-Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly) are trying their hardest to talk him around from pissing people off and just do the norm like announce the local news and school closures due to the huge snow storm raging through Pontypool right now. Grant has other ideas though and wants to start a debate due to an incident regarding a mysterious woman who just seemed to disappear as he was driving to the station that morning. As the show goes on their traffic reporter Ken Loney (Rick Roberts) in his sunshine chopper brings strange reports of sighting a riot happening just 5 kilometers away from the station at Dr. Mendez' surgery… soon after that they lose contact with him. Annoyingly for Grant and his team they are getting no official reports about what is happening from the towns authorities and have no idea what is going on until Grant is interviewed on air by a reporter from the BBC. He is informed by them that the town of Pontypool has been road blocked and quarantined without any information being conveyed to the town. They manage to get Ken back on the line who relays distressing scenes playing out of mobs of crazed people attacking others and eating them. Still the team at the studio have very little clue as to what is happening but soon the studio itself is surrounded. When one of the team becomes infected the remaining survivors get to experience the insane phenomena personally. Dr.Mendez (Hrant Alianak) manages to break into the station and goes on air with Grant to try and explain that the infection is transmitted through words spoken in the English language. After nearly succumbing to the virus himself Dr. Mendez flees leaving Grant and Sydney alone to try and understand what they have learnt about the virus and figure out how and if they can save the people of Pontypool!!

PONTYPOOL is one hell of an immersive movie for something that takes place almost completely in one setting with a tiny main cast who are so, so good. I suppose it helps that McHattie and Houle are a couple in the real world and their on screen rapport really shines through. McHattie has a charismatic yet underplayed feel to his character that really draws you in. Even the characters that are just voices on the radio have real depth to them. The thing that most interests me about PONTYPOOL are the zombies. The word zombie is not mentioned in this but due to their penchant for feasting on human flesh there is no other description that measures up. Director Bruce McDonald calls them "conversationalists" rather than "infected" or "zombies" and describes the three stages to the virus. The first stage is repetition of a word, it could be any word and it is different for everyone (in one of the cryptic warnings intercepted though it says to avoid terms of endearment). The second stage is that your language gets scrambled making you confused and unable to express yourself. The third and final stage makes you so distraught that you think that the only way out of the situation is to chew your way through the mouth of another. There is no real way of knowing someone is infected straight away unless you try and talk to them or if they have fed as they are usually covered in blood. If you want to know what happens to the infected if they don't get to feed then hold on and you will witness this in all it's colourful glory! The eeriest thing about it is that for a long time you don't get to see these zombies, you only hear the reports and disturbing scenes playing out over the radio as Ken Loney talks you through. When they do make an appearance they are quite unnerving, I think it is just the sheer number of them that brings back the fear reminiscent of the classic zombie movies. There is no need for contact lenses or much in the way of prosthetics or latex as they do look like normal people at first just very confused and disoriented. They are not particularly fast either, or at least not like the infected in say 28 DAYS LATER (2002) who are strong, powerful and raging... these guys are slow, babbling and confused but once they clock onto an uninfected person they change and will horde and hunt until they have devoured their prey. 

When it comes to FX there are no big pieces, no huge action sequences and mostly off screen kills which in this are cleverly thought out and really quite disturbing. There are some small scenes with effective practical FX including at least one quite graphic facial trauma segment. There are elements of quite dark humour both with Grant Mazzy as a character and in some of the scenarios. Early on in the movie an a cappella vocal group called "Lawrence And The Arabians" show up just as the virus is beginning to be reported to be interviewed and play some songs on the show. They are a group of white people who have "browned" up for authenticity. Eagle eyed viewers will notice cameos from Tony Burgess and Boyd Banks in this instance. There are a whole host of politically incorrect japes and character assassination which although harsh are really quite amusing.

PONTYPOOL is dialogue heavy and requires a reasonable amount of concentration to fully follow what is going on but do not let that put you off. It does not drag in the slightest and keeps you fully immersed in the concept to the end. It is an extremely well thought out story. Even though the idea that a cannibalistic virus can be hidden in words is a totally bonkers concept the story lends itself to try and speculate that it could be possible if it was designed as global warfare or terrorism against English speaking countries. This actually seems almost possible by the end of the movie in the way the French authorities treat Grant and Sydney. PONTYPOOL is the only movie I have seen that takes this on as a concept that I am aware of and I fully embrace this. If you can have Rage virus', running zombies and zombies that breed then why not this too? Incidentally, PONTYPOOL is the inspiration behind "Word Is The Virus" track 8 on The Final Feast by SEND MORE PARAMEDICS. They sample Dr. Mendez as he pieces together how the virus is transmitted and it is quite possibly one of only a handful of modern zombie movies the band have deemed worthy of recognition.

I don't know how well known this movie is so I highly recommend this to fans that want to see something different from the huge budget action sequences, cheesy one liners and over the top gore that seem to be the thing with zombie movies these days. Those aspects are not a bad thing but PONTYPOOL is at least a little different to the norm. It really is a bit of a hidden gem and I give PONTYPOOL a score of 4 brains out of 5.

PONTYPOOL is currently available to rent on Amazon Prime and to purchase on DVD and Blu Ray.