PONTYPOOL (2008)
Remember when you still had to actually go outside, walk down the street and then enter this weird place called a “Video Store” to get your hands on the latest releases? And how you left that place with the latest straight-to-video-releases and the highest of hopes? Hopes that too often were crushed and you were left with a feeling of emptiness, disappointment and sadness. Kinda like after sex, come to think of it. But every once in a while you came across a movie like “Retroactive” or “Mute Witness”! Movies that are so great that all those hours you spent watching “Leprechaun in his own asshole” or “Puppet Master 8” seems worthwhile.
The reason you spent all that time wading through the miles of awful straight-to-video-releases was so that you could get to these gems every once in a while, these small nuggets of gold in pool of shit. That´s part of the fun of being a genre movie-fan: discovering these small, obscure movies! The sad thing is that this phenomena doesn´t occur that often nowadays. It´s been a long time since I saw a straight-to-DVD-release that genuinely surprised and impressed me. But wouldn´t you know? The other day it happened, just when life was at its bleakest, I sat down to watch the independently produced Canadian horror flick “Pontypool” and it´s been a long time since I felt so stimulated by a horror flick.
“Pontypool” is about “Shock jock” Grant Mazzy (played by Stephen McHattie, in the role of a lifetime) who has, once again, been kicked-off the Big City airwaves and now works at the only job he could get: hosting the early morning show at CLSY Radio in Pontypool, Ontario, which broadcasts from the basement of the small town’s only church. What begins as another boring day of school bus cancellations due to yet another massive snow storm, things quickly turn deadly when reports of people having bizarre seizures, developing strange speech patterns and evoking horrendous acts of violence, start piling in.
That´s the set up and if you haven´t seen the movie yet, I recommend that you stop reading now and watch it instead because I´m gonna give away a thing or two in the paragraphs to come, ok? SPOILER!!!-ALERT! Have you turned off the computer and started downloading the movie instead? Ok, talk to you later.
Now that we´ve gotten rid of those assholes, we, the enlightened members of the movie watching audience who have actually had the good taste to watch this film, can indulge in some high class intellectual banter about it. Let me start off by saying that it´s been a long time since I´ve been so impressed by a movie. The last time was “Deep Throat”, I think… All kidding aside, director Bruce McDonald manages to pull off something pretty amazing with this flick: he takes the familiar trapped-in-a-building-surrounded-by-zombies-set-up and gives it a very original spin. You see, the people outside are zombies but not the kind of brain munching bastards we´re used to seeing in Romero´s movies. The disease that infects them is of a totally different kind. This movie´s stroke of genius is that the disease spreads through the language! The English language, to be more exact. I don´t know about you but I sure as hell haven´t seen that before in a movie. I mean, how many horror movies that have linguistics as the major threat are there out there? Not a hell of a lot, I would reckon.
This is the kind of a movie that reminds me why I like horror in the first place. I´ve been going through a bit of a slump when it comes to the genre we all know and love, lately. Most of the movies I watch nowadays seem to be re-hashings of some previous superior movie. Ever since “Hostel” and “Saw” started pushing the envelope of what they could show in a mainstream horror movie, the genre has appeared slightly watered down, if you ask me. I mean, where can you go after you´ve actually shown a guy getting his dick cut off in a mainstream horror movie? You can return to a more classic way of telling horrific stories, that´s where!
That´s why an original, atmospheric flick like “Pontypool” is such a gift for the horror fan! It doesn´t berate its audience by dumbing it down and it doesn´t let itself fall into the traps of standard horror movie conventions. If I´m ever gonna use the term “cerebral horror movie”, I´ll use it when describing this movie.
I don´t know what it is but there seems to be something about horror movies and Canada. We all know that Cronenberg hails from there and he´s also a cerebral fucker, right? “Pontypool” reminds me of Cronenberg when he´s at his best in the way that McDonald manages to make what is basically an unseen threat very, very believable. I don´t think it´s wrong to assume that the concept of a viral disease spreading through the language is something that Cronenberg would appreciate. But knowing how twisted he is, he´d probably change it into that it spreads via vaginas that grows out of men´s assholes, or something like that.
McDonald manages to manipulate our expectations on what the threat is in ways I haven´t seen in a long, long time. He insists on keeping the focus on his actors, which aren´t that many but they are perfectly cast, which he should be applauded for. I´d love to see this guy tackle something by H.P. Lovecraft in the future.
But back to the actors! This Stephen McHattie-guy… I´m fairly sure that you recognize this guy because he´s been in close to 200 movies but as far as I know, this is his first leading role. And it´s not a day too soon! Maybe you remember him as one of the hit men from the opening scenes of “A History of Violence”? He was pretty unpleasant in that one. He was in “Shoot ´Em Up”, as well, and he always does a fine job. He´s like one of those old school character actors, like Peter Lorre or Harry Dean Stanton. I am extremely happy that this guy has finally been given the opportunity to show that he command a movie like this. He´s in every single scene on this movie and he does a fantastic job at it!
I can´t for the life of me figure out why this movie isn´t hailed as one of the best zombie movies of the last 10 years? “Pontypool” is such a taut little film and at a lean 90 minutes, it doesn´t outstay its welcome. McDonald and Tony Burgess (who wrote both the script and the novel it was based on) have done a beautiful work while pacing this movie. It moves along very effectively and every now and then we do get some blood.
But let´s not forget the fact that however exciting “Pontypool” may be, it´s also a genuinely funny movie. There´s a fantastically silly and funny scene at the beginning when Mazzy´s visited in the studio by a weird singing group dressed as Arabs, called “Lawrence & The Arabians”. For some reason, one of the guys seemed to be dressed up as Osama Bin Laden. Don´t ask me why he is but that scene made me laugh out loud.
The best way to describe this movie is as if the Cronenberg decided to write a script for John Carpenter. Grant Mazzy is exactly the kind of protagonist that Carpenter would´ve had a field day with: cynical, nihilistic and pissed off! McDonald also makes good use of the classic siege-set piece that Carpenter has used so many times in his films.
Even though I don´t like to talk shit about my man M. Night Shyamalan I can´t help but wonder how “The Happening” would have turned out if Bruce McDonald and Tony Burgess would have written and directed it instead.
So seek this one out, fuckers! Until next time: take scare!
Thomas