Each day this week, the staff of The Dissolve will pick an underrated horror film for your Halloween-related viewing pleasure. Today, Keith Phipps recommends Pontypool, a unique Canadian riff on the zombie film:
Matt: With all of horror-dom at your fingertips, Keith, why did you choose Pontypool?
Keith: Honestly, it was the first film that came to mind when you put out the call for underrated horror that our readers could rent or stream, in part because I think most people’s streaming habits involve taking a gamble on films about which they’d heard only a little, if anything at all. I’d heard good things—in part from our own Noel Murray—so I took a chance on Pontypool a few years ago, and I haven’t forgotten it since then. Let me state right away that I don’t think it’s a perfect movie by any stretch. As I’m sure we’ll get into, the movie keeps raising ideas that it doesn’t have the space to explore. But while that can be frustrating, it’s also part of what makes it memorable.
The idea of a virus spread through language is so rich and hard to shake, it doesn’t really matter that the film keeps suggesting alternate, even contradictory theories about how it works and what it means. It helps, too, that the cast keeps preventing the headiness of the concept from getting in the way of the movie. Stephen McHattie (as down-on-his luck shock jock Grant Mazzy) and Lisa Houle (McHattie’s real-life wife, who plays his producer Sydney Briar and is so good in this movie I wish she appeared in more movies) give the action a sense of chilling immediacy.
Matt: The language virus makes for an interesting pair with the claustrophobic setting of the radio station where Grant Mazzy works. On the other hand, it does sort of upend the old “Show, don’t tell” dictum of filmmaking; Pontypool is almost all tell and no show. Why do you think that works in this case?
Keith: For starters, I think director Bruce McDonald keeps the film lively even though it’s largely confined to a single (though nifty) set, that of a small town’s local radio station. Mostly it’s the way smart actors deliver a smart script that suggests the world outside has started to spin out of control. There’s a real theater-of-the-mind quality to the way the film’s heroes learn about what’s going on around them through police reports, on-the-scene reporters, and other sources, then convey those updates to their listeners. Adapted from the Tony Burgess novel Pontypool Changes Everything, this feels at times like a radio play—and it’s been that, too.
But the play between what’s happening and how it gets processed is also central to the protagonist, Grant Mazzy, who’s used to spinning news to get a reaction. Thus, pre-crisis, a report about suburban pot growers gets turned into a fanciful speculation about the dangers of the booby traps they could use—but in Mazzy’s account, almost certainly do use—to protect their crops. And, thus, during the crisis, Mazzy has to be talked back from going too far—then gets annoyed when the BBC engages in its own speculation based in part on information he’s given them. All this before he realizes that the very words he and others speak are at the root of the problem. Though at its most cerebral it feels driven by the terror of language’s instability—a George Romero film as rewritten by Jacques Derrida—it’s also a pretty simple example of the return of the repressed. Whatever else it is, Pontypool’s a film about a guy who’s used words all his life while ignoring their consequences being confronted with a weaponized version of the language he’s wielded so carelessly.
Matt: I have to admit, I’m not sure I entirely understand how the language virus works. Am I supposed to? Or does that even matter?
Keith: I think it matters that we think about it, but I don’t it matters that it’s impossible to figure out. Is its source the medical clinic that’s the site of the first riot? Is Honey the cat somehow at fault? Maybe! I think there are a number of suggestive elements to the virus, though, that make the film richer: The fact that the disease (disorder?) seems to be spread more quickly through endearments—and the way that detail adds tension to the way Sydney talks to her children on the phone. There’s also the detail of the virus seemingly being confined to the English language, which touches on the divisions between the French- and English-speaking parts of Canada (which I won’t pretend to understand beyond knowing it’s a source of tension). More than anything, I think it just neatly underlines how dependent we are on language both for expressing ourselves and understanding the world—and how much it’s language that sets us apart.
Matt: Looking over his IMDb page, I recognize a million things Stephen McHattie has done, but I don’t recognize him; he’s a character actor getting a rare leading role. What do you think he brings to Pontypool?
Keith: That voice, for starters. It’s the first thing we hear watching the movie even before a single image has appeared. Without a completely gripping voice at the center—there’s the power of language again—the film would fall apart. He’s completely convincing as someone who’s entertained audiences, however dwindling, for years. He also, here at least, has the grizzled looks of a hard-living lifer. If there’s ever a character destined to end up working out of a basement in a remote corner of Ontario, it’s this guy.
Matt: You mentioned earlier that you don’t think the movie is perfect. What would you say is its biggest problem?
Keith: The last act. The first half or so is such a brilliant reversal of the show-don’t-tell dictate that when the film does have to start showing it’s not as strong. The word-virus-zombies in our mind are much more powerful than the word-virus-zombies that actually show up. Also, that’s where the vagueness of the problem becomes a problem itself. Sydney and Grant scramble to figure out a way to defeat their foes but the rules of engagement are so unclear that it feels a bit muddled. That said, I’m not sure I’d want that much more clarity. Part of why this film has stayed with me is that I don’t feel like I have a grasp on it. Also, did you stick around for the post-credits stinger? What was that?
Matt: Don’t look at me, I was hoping you could tell me! I like the way the movie opens with sound and no visuals and then closes with more sound over the end credits, but yeah that stinger is pretty impenetrable. Let’s just assume neither one of us can explain it and close instead with this question: Do you have a favorite scary moment from the film?
Keith: Sure: The sad fate of traffic reporter Ken Loney. He’s kind of the film in miniature: A man who creates a fiction of flying a traffic helicopter, a fiction sold by the suggestive power of words, who is undone by the fact that you can’t fly away from danger in an imaginary helicopter. He keeps getting into increasingly dangerous situations that give the film its scariest moments. Then, when he finally dies, he gets the worst possible on-air tribute he could receive when a sobbing Sydney outs him as a pedophile. Or probably a pedophile, anyway. Either way, the word’s going to stick to him, assuming anyone in Pontypool will be using words much longer.
Pontypool is available on DVD and Blu-ray, and for digital rental or purchase on iTunes. You can also stream the movie on Netflix. Here’s the original trailer:
Previously recommended:
-Noel Murray on The Dead Zone