Pontypool (2008)
"Shut up... or die."
Plot
When an outbreak of a deadly virus infects a small Ontario town, Grant Mazzy, a ‘shock jock’ radio host, is forced to stay on the air and cover the events as he becomes trapped inside his radio station.
Review
Imagine a bizarre, frankly terrifying scenario for a second. What if the very words you're listening to daily, the syllables coming out of your mouth or from your speakers, were a deadly virus? What if just by hearing someone speak, you were being infected? It is a deeply unsettling concept. The idea that our language, the one thing that has separated us from the rest of the animals on the planet, can become the very thing that destroys us is horrifying. For all that we know that is made up of atoms, molecules and various elements, humans have over centuries developed the ability to order and categorise everything using language, bringing a sense of order and understanding to the chaotic natural world and something which has eluded other species that co-exist with us. And now that very tool could be the instrument of our demise. That’s the nightmare scenario posed in Pontypool, a little-known 2008 shoestring budgeted Canadian horror. The film toys with a lot of concepts that have been big news over the last few years – journalistic integrity being top of the bill. Having sat through a few historic moments/events of the past few years (Brexit, the race protests in the wake of the George Floyd incident, the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, anything Trump does), it has been appalling to see how low some of the world’s major media outlets have stooped to whip up tensions and divisions, to drive panic and fear and attempt to sway public opinion in one way or another.
Director Bruce McDonald channels a lot of early David Cronenberg (think Rabid or Shivers) here in what is almost a zombie film but if I had a better point of comparison, it would be George A. Romero’s The Crazies, where the threats are less brains-hungry and more brain destroying. Pontypool could be a tough sell to a less responsive crowd – that the bulk of the film is literally the characters talking about and responding to events that are happening off-screen. The script does an incredible job of making everything feel tense just through the power of suggestion. One scene involving Mazzy take a live call from someone who has encountered one of the infected is literally just the camera focusing on the radio presenter as he calmly talks to the person on the other end, but you’d think you had witnessed the entire scene, such is the power of the sequence. Ponytpool features dozens of examples of this – dramatic tension is created and manipulated without showing us anything on the screen. As an English school teacher in the UK, I’m quick to link this whole approach with the fantastic J.B. Priestley play An Inspector Calls where everything happens in a handful of rooms in the house between a handful of characters, but you wouldn’t think it by the time the play ends. The film takes place entirely on Valentine's Day, right in the middle of a massive blizzard, and in a single location, a very claustrophobic one at that. It's a talk radio station in Pontypool, Ontario, and just to be clear that's the town in Canada, not the one in Wales! The script creates unbearable tension entirely through suggestion. The audience is trapped in that radio shack with the characters, so we only know what they know. It's masterfully crafted tension, manipulating the drama without showing the action on screen. The audience's imagination fills in the gaps, and our brains conjure up something far worse than what a small indie budget could actually film.
If you’ve never read the novel Pontypool Changes Everything (yeah, I’d never heard of it either) then the twist about the origins of the virus that comes mid-way through Pontypool will either be a stroke of genius or a brick wall in which the film badly collides. For me it was the former. The virus is spread by spoken words act as carriers that literally burrow into the brain. The symptoms start with the victim just repeating a phrase endlessly, a literal weaponisation of semantics, and repeating the words until they completely lose their meaning, which somehow leads to this violent, mindless rage. I can think of numerous daft TikTok trends I’ve had to deal with in school over the past few years, notably the ‘6 7’ nonsense, where lexical meaning goes out of the window (usually the mindless rage has been from my end as I tell my classes to shut up and stop using those daft phrases). And yet the film manages to balance this incredible horror with a sort of midnight black comedy. The infected (they call them conversationalists in the film) start imitating the sound of something, such as window wipers, or you have a dying man suddenly making baby noises or another one imitating a boiling kettle. It sounds funny, but on screen, it's just deeply unnerving. It's a different take on the apocalypse compared to something like Dawn of the Dead. This isn't just a zombie herd chasing you, it's way more existential. It's a terrifying parable for what happens when our defining characteristic, our language, gives way to pure violence, which instantly turns a radio station from a safe haven into literally the most dangerous place on Earth. The irony of Pontypool is that Mazzy’s only tool is his voice as a broadcaster so by staying on the air to warn people, the radio crew might be the ones spreading the infection to the whole town. The film deeply explores journalistic integrity as communication entirely breaks down. They even find themselves arguing with a BBC anchorman who calls in and claims their town is being quarantined.
But language is entirely based on arbitrary agreed-upon signs. There's no natural connection between a word and the object it describes. We just come to a consensus and agree on it. So, because the virus infects that agreed-upon meaning, the only cure is to jumble up signification entirely. To survive the virus, the characters will have to unlearn the meaning of words, jumble them all up and reassign them in a bid to confuse the brain. That by itself would make you go crazy, the very thing that they are trying to avoid. By randomly assigning new meanings to words so they no longer understand their own language. For example, they must convince themselves that the word kill now actually means kiss, stripping away a lifetime of language comprehension in minutes. It's like trying to rewrite the operating system of your computer while it's actively crashing, but the computer is your own brain. it's not just a zombie battering at the booth glass, it's the mental torture of having to drive yourself completely nuts just to avoid the infection. The panic of trying to unknow everything you know. It’s a scarier thought and something which is a darn sight scarier than just being physically torn to shreds by a zombie horde. Pontypool does start to run out of steam at this point, and the idea of this solution is far easier to understand than the execution of it. But it's earned enough good favour by this point for you to run with it.
Pontypool relies heavily upon the shoulders of veteran character actor Stephen McHattie to keep the story moving forward. McHattie is one of those actors who has popped up in hundreds of roles in film and television over his long career, ranging from small parts in the likes of Beverly Hills Cop III and A History of Violence to being a mainstay of guest appearances in countless 90s and 00s TV shows like The X-Files and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He takes full advantage of being given a leading role, turning Mazzy into a sympathetic, and likeable character despite being portrayed as a ‘shock hock’ which will no doubt bring in plenty of negative stereotyping. His transformation from cocky and cheeky arrogance to sheer terror that the world is ending is brilliant. Lisa Houle, McHattie’s real-life wife, co-stars as his producer, and Georgina Reilly is the final member of his regular team. The three bounce off each other so well that you really do not want to see any of them fall victim to the virus. Credit must also be given to the number of actors who don’t appear on screen, but you can just hear their voices over the radio. It’s not easy to create tension and horror with just your voice but each successive phone call just reveals worse things about the fate of everyone outside.
Final Verdict
Pontypool really punches so far above its weight class, that it really should have been a bigger springboard for McDonald. It may be too smart for some or too suggestive for others and the film does take a big downward spiral during the final third but it really questions how much of your daily reality is held together simply by the trust that the words you hear mean exactly what you think they mean. Because if that trust vanishes, everything else goes with it. And since we consume massive amounts of media, podcasts, and news every single day, I want to leave you with one final thought to mull over. At what point does our endless consumption of chatter and information stop making us more informed and instead simply become a different kind of mindless echoing virus? That is a terrifying thought to leave on because maybe we're already infected. Pontypool will certainly have that enlightening effect upon you.
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Pontypool Director(s): Bruce McDonald Writer(s): Tony Burgess (novel "Pontypool Changes Everything") Actor(s): Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly, Hrant Alianak, Rick Roberts, Daniel Fathers, Beatriz Yuste, Boyd Banks Duration: 93 mins |  |
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