Review of Pontypool (2009) by Chris Z — 26 Mar 2010

Most FASCINATING movie I've seen in a while. It's almost too much being thrown at you that it doesn't quite allow itself to establish depth, but it is still entirely and thoroughly mind-bending.

I don't give this 5-stars for the filmmaking, which is as rudimentary and low-budget as one could imagine: the entire film takes places within the confines of an isolated radio studio. Reminiscent of the original radio version of Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds,' we watch as a growling radio host Grant Mazzy and his two producers begin to cover mysterious reports of a zombie-like disturbance in the small town of Pontypool.

But this is *not* a zombie movie except in the loosest sense. It is a movie about speech in all of its manifestations, and about language itself. In this setting, Grant Mazzy as representative of Talk Radio, could be the virus itself, spreading nonsense out into the population, turning his listeners into zombies.

But he is also the embattled savior, speaking against certain death, perhaps silenced in the end by the military for his speech and the threat it poses. It is also a cultural war, because the threat here is English (the movie is Canadian), the emergency messages are being sent out all in French and other languages, which become their own divisive weapons, their own gibberish which must be deciphered, but then cannot be spoken because hidden in language itself is the zombie infection.

It is language here, which must be understood, but is deadly when it is understood, a plague of nonsense battled only by the confusion of losing our own understanding of language itself. The enemy is the word itself, our understanding of the word.

The idea of this film is freaking brilliant, I have never seen anything like it before. Maybe just because I'm a word-nerd, but this film blew my mind. Despite its crude and rudimentary nature, and its scattered focus, it is still absolutely fascinating.