About.com Rating

Movies about zombie (or zombie-like) invasions are a dime a dozen nowadays, but few handle the apocalyptic situation as uniquely as Pontypool, a sharp, witty tale that relies more on atmosphere and imagination than the genre-standard guts and gore.

The Plot

One snowy Valentine's Day morning in the small Canadian town of Pontypool, recently fired big-city "shock jock" DJ Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) trudges to his new job doing the morning show in a sleepy burg where missing cats make the news.

As he sleepwalks through the radio program, wearily reciting the news of the day and cutting away to Ken in the news chopper (i.e., a car parked on an overlook) for traffic, his broadcast begins to receive reports of unruly activity.

First, there's word that a riot has broken out near a local doctor's office. Then, there's a rumor than French-Canadian riot police have set up roadblocks around town. Ken calls in with eyewitness reports of roving bands of people violently attacking townsfolk. Eventually, Grant and his team -- producer Sydney (Lisa Houle) and "technical cowgirl" Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) -- hear that Pontypool is under quarantine. But why?

A cryptic broadcast in French provides a clue, saying, in part, "Please avoid contact with close family members...Refrain from all terms of endearment...Please avoid the English language." Somehow, it seems, words are turning people insane. Words are transmitting a sickness that turns people into babbling, irrational maniacs who feel the need to attack those who are still hanging on to their coherence.

Trapped in the radio station with a growing horde of lunatics outside, the trio have to figure out a way to survive without doing what comes most naturally for a talk radio show.

The End Product

Pontypool is an "anti-exploitation movie," playing down the explicitness of the horrific events in a refreshing show of restraint for a horror film. The lack of a horror focus shouldn't come as a surprise, given director Bruce McDonald's dramatic background (Hard Core Logo, The Tracy Fragments), but the fact that Pontypool can nonetheless create so much anxiety and dread is a testament to its transcendent storytelling.

Its structure is play-like -- reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead -- with the action confined largely one building. Rather than view the raging apocalypse outside, we viewers are left as in the dark as the characters in the movie, relying on rumors, unverified reports and eyewitness accounts to paint the picture of what we can't see. Pontypool thus builds tension like a breaking news story, with a flurry of information generating a hectic scene similar to Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds hoax. Appropriately, a film about the power of words uses words as its primary tool.

Bloodthirsty horror fans expecting a gory, zombie-like free-for-all might do better seeking out Dead Snow, but Pontypool provides thrills of a different sort: literary thrills that exercise your imagination, paranoid thrills that make you question anyone who stumbles over their words, artistic thrills that leave you in awe of the talent in front of and behind the camera.

McHattie in particular shines as Mazzy, one of the great horror heroes in recent memory: a grizzled fish out of water with a silver, caustic tongue who, despite the chaos surrounding him, finds a sense of purpose that had been fleeting since he moved to this podunk town. His acerbic wit leads to welcome moments of dark humor, from his recitation of (no doubt hastily prepared) obituaries of people who've died in the pandemonium -- and the people they took with them -- to his reaction to an oddball, prearranged studio performance of a musical rendition of Lawrence of Arabia.

The delicious sense of dread captured in Pontypool, of course, wouldn't be possible in a larger city, since everyone would just end up texting each other.

The Skinny

• Acting: A (McHattie is mesmerizing, while Houle holds her own as his take-no-guff boss.)
• Direction: A- (McDonald places the audience in the midst of the tension)
• Script: B (A brilliant concept that perhaps doesn't push itself as far as it could.)
• Gore/Effects: B- (There is some gore, but not as over the top as a typical "zombie"-ish movie)
• Overall: B+ (Unique, challenging, intelligent, but not every horror fan's cup of tea.)

Pontypool is directed by Bruce McDonald and not rated by the MPAA. Release date: May 29, 2009.