A Zombie Movie With Braaaiiins

Move over, Shaun of the Dead! There’s another game in town.

Its name is Pontypool, a 2008 film by Bruce McDonald. I originally rented it from iTunes because it was only 99 cents, and I vaguely recalled hearing some praise of it. I knew there were zombies involved; I put off watching the thing because I was scared it would keep me up at night.

Funny thing is, it did. But not for the reasons I thought.

You know when a piece of gum gets all rubbery and starts to lose its flavour? Ever decided to take the easy way out and pop in a fresh piece? Keep doing it and your wad of gum gets bigger and bigger. Your jaw starts to hurt. You have trouble closing your mouth around it.

What I’m trying to say is, Pontypool offers a lot to chew on.

Except for the prologue-like first scene, the entire movie takes place in a single set: the studio of a small-town radio station where shock jock Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) has just been hired by producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) after getting kicked off the big-city airwaves. Together with their techie, Laurel-Ann (Georgina Reilly), Grant and Syd are about to experience a deadly epidemic, the likes of which none of them have ever imagined.

[THE BACK-OF-THE-CASE SYNOPSIS WILL TELL YOU WHAT I’M ABOUT TO REVEAL, I.E. THE MAIN PLOT CONCEIT, BUT JUST IN CASE YOU TRUST ME ENOUGH TO RENT IT BLINDLY AND WANT IT TO BE A SURPRISE — SPOILERS AHEAD]

s

t

u

p

i

d

b

a

c

k

–

o

f

–

t

h

e

–

c

a

s

e

See, unlike most cinematic zombie-causing epidemics, this one doesn’t get passed on by physical contact, bodily fluids, or eating brains. Instead, the virus is what Richard Dawkins might call a meme. It spreads through language, and English has been infected.

The main thing I loved about this movie was how its plot seems so off-the-wall at first — zombie-virus spreading through words? What the heck does that mean? But the more I saw, the more I began to recognize all the “crazy” happenings as experiences I encounter in my daily life: not being able to stop talking, even when I know I should be silent. Picking up some stupid word or phrase and not being able to shake it out of my head. Finding myself saying absolute nonsense because the connection is missing between the concepts in my head and the words on my tongue. Hearing something my parents or friends or coworkers say pop out of my mouth before I even realize I’ve adopted the phrase.

In our day-to-day lives, language often does seem both to have a life of its own when we use it properly — and to render us into mental zombies, when we rely blindly on learned convention and don’t question all the ways words act and interact and come together to construct meaning.

For that reason, I thought it was a stroke of genius on the part of the filmmakers and the writer (Tony Burgess) to set the story against a background of talk radio — surely one of the places we’re most used to hearing words divorced from meaning, hosts seemingly saying nice-sounding phrases to avoid dead air or buffer the strange ideas of unruly callers.

Actually, I loved the setting in general. It was refreshing to have a movie like this set in small-town Ontario — in a location I know, with an atmosphere I understand. Even better, the choice of setting is more than just changing the backdrop for something less commonplace; Canada has its own linguistic environment, with its two official languages, and the interplay between this fact and the plot of the film was pretty awesome.

And the acting — wow! According to IMDB, I’ve seen Stephen McHattie in a variety of TV shows and movies. But until I watched Pontypool, I never managed to notice him. Holy cow, does he root viewers to the spot with Grant Mazzy! And he has to do it all with face and voice while sitting in a chair, talking into a microphone. I have to admit, there was a little less focus on the actual personalities of the two female characters, so I wasn’t as overwhelmed by them at first, but they were both still fantastic, and I loved the chemistry between Mazzy and his exasperated boss, Syd (the Internet informs me that the two actors are married?). And the actors who get taken over by the verbal virus totally sell it hardcore.

I also really appreciated that this movie didn’t rely on the feeling that something was going to jump out at any minute. I hate cat-suddenly-leaping-out-of-the-trash-can or monster-appears-at-the-window scares. Pontypool does have one surprising moment like this, but it’s not played like a big deal, and it’s very close to the beginning of the movie. The filmmakers worked hard to cultivate a sense of fear that’s, well, epistemological as well as visceral. Through the whole movie, we can’t ignore first that we have no idea whether the reports Mazzy, Syd, and Laurel-Ann hear are true, and second, what the heck is going on if they are.

I don’t want to give the impression that Pontypool is a perfect movie; it’s definitely not. There are occasional rough ideas and rough bits of dialogue throughout. I’m still not entirely sure why the virus sometimes worked the way it did, though I’m willing to accept that particular twists are in the script and make the movie more enjoyable, so whatever. And sometimes, it’s hard to shake the feeling that particular character or plot details got added just to boost indie cred: “See? A mainstream zombie movie goes like this; but our intelligent zombie movie goes like that!” And I guess I could’ve done with more shaking up the traditional gender roles (quick: what gender of character is worried about their children? What gender of character is willing to be an iconoclast to pursue ideals? What gender of character goes hysterical and has to be saved from themselves?), even though overall the characters come across as individuals rather than clichés

But, honestly? Nevermind all that. Pontypool is worth seeing, and if you like your movies to make you think, this is one virus that will infect you for good. Seriously, the night after I watched Pontypool, as I was going to sleep, I suddenly got caught up realizing that, given what the zombies (the filmmakers call them “conversationalists”) are supposed to do when they attack people, what happens in the last scenes is even more significant than just the regular plot-ramifications. Every time I think I get to the bottom of this film’s themes, there’s a new angle to grasp — and the fact that the filmmakers managed to cram all this into one movie and at the same time leave the physical what-happens-to-the-characters plot feeling resolved and satisfying shows you how unique this movie is.