Pontypool Review
I spent the evening in Toronto to first see Bruce McDonald's new quasi-zombie film Pontypool and hang out with a friend who has just recently moved to the city.
Pontypool Review w/ minor spoilers
Pontypool is a successfully odd mixture of horror, psychological suspense, post-structuralist linguistic metaphor, dark comedy, and gross-out effects hinged on a fascinating, metaphysical premise: what if the English language could transmit a virus to people through infected words? Furthermore, once those words are understood by listeners, what if they drove them insane and turned them into ravenous cannibalistic murderers? Based on the book Pontypool Changes Everything (1998) by Tony Burgess, this Canadian film by Bruce McDonald (director of Hardcore Logo and The Tracey Fragments) is not a conventional horror film. Although it delivers finely executed suspense and terror, it is not afraid to diffuse the tension with an ironic jab or joke.
Zombies are awesome. I love their rich metaphorical and symbolic power. For many reasons, zombies have infected our popular culture in the last ten years and flourished. Now, Bruce McDonald offers a Canadian installment into the world of zombie films although I have to admit that the zombies in Pontypool are not of the undead variety. I will use the term "zombie" to refer to a living person who is either hypnotized or infected or otherwise put into a condition that mimics a voodoo or Romero-esque flesh-eating zombie under the provision we realize that these people are clearly mortal such as in 28 Day Later and not undead as in Dawn of the Dead. However, McDonald has said he prefers to call the creatures in his film "conversationalists."
In the small town of Pontypool, Ontario (east of Toronto), Grant Mazzy (played by Stephen McHattie) is a disaffected talk-radio show host broadcasting out of a claustrophobic church basement known as The Beacon. We get the sense he's used to the big-city, hot-topic button-pushing style of radio, and he is clearly not happy with his work reporting school closures, traffic news, and local obituaries. He also hates the winter, and if one thing can kill your spirits in rural Ontario it's definitely the winter. Unfortunately, things begin to get much worse as Mazzy and his skeleton crew - his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and sound technician Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) - begin to receive calls about citizens rioting, attacking and mutilating others, and talking in a strange form of English gibberish. Although the film's narrative is more or less told through an objective camera, the camera never leaves the small studio. The audience and the characters first learn of the horrifying details of the infection from callers and reporters until it ends up at (and then through) their front door.
Shot on a privately financed budget around or under half a million on a shooting and post-production schedule that only ended a week or so before the festival began, Pontypool nevertheless looks professional and polished. This is due in great part to McDonald's skill as an editor but also because it was shot on the new Red One HD camera. McDonald makes excellent use of the limited budget, actors and sets, allowing the most extreme horror to take place off-screen in the audience's imagination. Far from a cop-out, being able to hear the events unfold and see the expression on the character's faces while the horror remains unseen heightens the suspense. It reminds me of a classic bit from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), to which Pontypool and all zombie and quasi-zombies films owe their existence. In Romero's Night, Ben describes a scene in which a truck plows through a mob of unfeeling zombies with " . . . ten, fifteen of those things chasing after it, grabbing and holding on. . . . I realized that I was alone, with fifty or sixty of those things just standing there, staring at me! I started to drive, I - I just plowed right through them! They didn't move! They didn't run, or - they just stood there, staring at me! I just wanted to crush them! And they scattered through the air, like bugs." Although we never see this scene, Ben's description is so vivid and genuine that it becomes one the most spectacular images of the film. Pontypool uses the same technique, but it ratchets up the terror with the use of sound. There is no way depicting the actual violence on screen would ever be as effective as what our imaginations would provide.
The film moves along and a strong pace with McHattie's forceful personality and voice as the adhesive that keeps the characters and scenes together. I loved him in this film. Perhaps some of the best work I've seen him do since the film could not work without his character's struggle to come to terms with such a bizarre situation. While the film does try to depict its premise with a straight face, there is the occasional tongue-in-cheek aside (notably with the Lawrence of Arabia musical singers). Most of this humour derives from a specifically Canadian cultural context in which the film takes shots at the BBC's pomposity, the animosity and conflict between Canadian English and Canadian French, Canada's "history of violent separatist terrorist movements," etc. The audience I sat with ate this up instantly, though I suspect the nuances might not play to a non-Canadian crowd. I think the true heart of the film, which seperates it from other films of this kind, is that it is a product of Canada. Even though it does not appear to be overtly concerned with saying something about our national identity and history (unlike TIFF's other big Canadian film: Paul Gross's war movie Passchendaele), the issue of language and how/what we communicate is incredibly pertinent to the bi-lingual Canadian identity and cultural politic.
The only criticism of the film that I do have is the inexplicable appearance of Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak) who seems to appear only to spouse theories about the nature of the virus. When he appears, the cohesive tension and pacing skips a beat and becomes too unglued and expository, and the film never seems genuine or on track until the character exits.
Pontypool works as a psychological thriller with humor with a metaphor crawling under its skin about the way language has an effect on our identities and the extent to which communication and words hold a hidden power in our lives (kill is kiss). I highly recommend it and can't wait to see it again on DVD or in the theatre if it gets a theatrical run. I feel there is more to absorb than I got on that first viewing.
And for you Bruce McDonald fans out there, keep your eyes and ears peeled for certain McDonald-ism such as a reference to Joey Ramone and an audio cameo from Hugh Dillon of current Flashpoint fame.
Pontypool Review w/ minor spoilers
Pontypool is a successfully odd mixture of horror, psychological suspense, post-structuralist linguistic metaphor, dark comedy, and gross-out effects hinged on a fascinating, metaphysical premise: what if the English language could transmit a virus to people through infected words? Furthermore, once those words are understood by listeners, what if they drove them insane and turned them into ravenous cannibalistic murderers? Based on the book Pontypool Changes Everything (1998) by Tony Burgess, this Canadian film by Bruce McDonald (director of Hardcore Logo and The Tracey Fragments) is not a conventional horror film. Although it delivers finely executed suspense and terror, it is not afraid to diffuse the tension with an ironic jab or joke.
Zombies are awesome. I love their rich metaphorical and symbolic power. For many reasons, zombies have infected our popular culture in the last ten years and flourished. Now, Bruce McDonald offers a Canadian installment into the world of zombie films although I have to admit that the zombies in Pontypool are not of the undead variety. I will use the term "zombie" to refer to a living person who is either hypnotized or infected or otherwise put into a condition that mimics a voodoo or Romero-esque flesh-eating zombie under the provision we realize that these people are clearly mortal such as in 28 Day Later and not undead as in Dawn of the Dead. However, McDonald has said he prefers to call the creatures in his film "conversationalists."
In the small town of Pontypool, Ontario (east of Toronto), Grant Mazzy (played by Stephen McHattie) is a disaffected talk-radio show host broadcasting out of a claustrophobic church basement known as The Beacon. We get the sense he's used to the big-city, hot-topic button-pushing style of radio, and he is clearly not happy with his work reporting school closures, traffic news, and local obituaries. He also hates the winter, and if one thing can kill your spirits in rural Ontario it's definitely the winter. Unfortunately, things begin to get much worse as Mazzy and his skeleton crew - his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and sound technician Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) - begin to receive calls about citizens rioting, attacking and mutilating others, and talking in a strange form of English gibberish. Although the film's narrative is more or less told through an objective camera, the camera never leaves the small studio. The audience and the characters first learn of the horrifying details of the infection from callers and reporters until it ends up at (and then through) their front door.
Shot on a privately financed budget around or under half a million on a shooting and post-production schedule that only ended a week or so before the festival began, Pontypool nevertheless looks professional and polished. This is due in great part to McDonald's skill as an editor but also because it was shot on the new Red One HD camera. McDonald makes excellent use of the limited budget, actors and sets, allowing the most extreme horror to take place off-screen in the audience's imagination. Far from a cop-out, being able to hear the events unfold and see the expression on the character's faces while the horror remains unseen heightens the suspense. It reminds me of a classic bit from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), to which Pontypool and all zombie and quasi-zombies films owe their existence. In Romero's Night, Ben describes a scene in which a truck plows through a mob of unfeeling zombies with " . . . ten, fifteen of those things chasing after it, grabbing and holding on. . . . I realized that I was alone, with fifty or sixty of those things just standing there, staring at me! I started to drive, I - I just plowed right through them! They didn't move! They didn't run, or - they just stood there, staring at me! I just wanted to crush them! And they scattered through the air, like bugs." Although we never see this scene, Ben's description is so vivid and genuine that it becomes one the most spectacular images of the film. Pontypool uses the same technique, but it ratchets up the terror with the use of sound. There is no way depicting the actual violence on screen would ever be as effective as what our imaginations would provide.
The film moves along and a strong pace with McHattie's forceful personality and voice as the adhesive that keeps the characters and scenes together. I loved him in this film. Perhaps some of the best work I've seen him do since the film could not work without his character's struggle to come to terms with such a bizarre situation. While the film does try to depict its premise with a straight face, there is the occasional tongue-in-cheek aside (notably with the Lawrence of Arabia musical singers). Most of this humour derives from a specifically Canadian cultural context in which the film takes shots at the BBC's pomposity, the animosity and conflict between Canadian English and Canadian French, Canada's "history of violent separatist terrorist movements," etc. The audience I sat with ate this up instantly, though I suspect the nuances might not play to a non-Canadian crowd. I think the true heart of the film, which seperates it from other films of this kind, is that it is a product of Canada. Even though it does not appear to be overtly concerned with saying something about our national identity and history (unlike TIFF's other big Canadian film: Paul Gross's war movie Passchendaele), the issue of language and how/what we communicate is incredibly pertinent to the bi-lingual Canadian identity and cultural politic.
The only criticism of the film that I do have is the inexplicable appearance of Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak) who seems to appear only to spouse theories about the nature of the virus. When he appears, the cohesive tension and pacing skips a beat and becomes too unglued and expository, and the film never seems genuine or on track until the character exits.
Pontypool works as a psychological thriller with humor with a metaphor crawling under its skin about the way language has an effect on our identities and the extent to which communication and words hold a hidden power in our lives (kill is kiss). I highly recommend it and can't wait to see it again on DVD or in the theatre if it gets a theatrical run. I feel there is more to absorb than I got on that first viewing.
And for you Bruce McDonald fans out there, keep your eyes and ears peeled for certain McDonald-ism such as a reference to Joey Ramone and an audio cameo from Hugh Dillon of current Flashpoint fame.