Pontypool

Recent arrival to the local radio station Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) has a habit of shaking things up a bit, a once big time DJ on a talk radio channel this small outpost station has secured the employment of Mazzy to help lift its ratings; however his harsh words and political views cause show producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) a great deal of discomfort.

On an icy cold day Mazzy starts his show in his usual controversial manner, but before long is disturbed from his train of thought when eye in the sky weather reporter Ken Loney reports a riot at a doctor’s office followed by what he describes as an explosion of bodies coming from the building. It’s not long before Mazzy, Sydney and Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) realise that they are stuck in a radio station while the world outside falls apart, but maybe they have the solution to the outside terror.

Pontypool is one of the most unusual horror movies I have seen in a considerable time, it varies from being incredibly good to pretty near awful, and from disturbingly chilling to ridiculously funny at the drop of a hat. It’s hard to work out whether this was an intentional change or a budgetary one as the movie was clearly constructed on a very tight budget.  But despite the movies failings Pontypool is one of the most effective movies I have seen during the 2009 Frightfest weekend.

The horror of the movie is a really clever plot device of the unknown, in the case here our movies three “heroes” are sat in the radio station taking calls from Ken and members of the public as the world as they know it just kilometres away is falling apart. They are not seeing anything, just hearing; listening to terrified voices on the end of the telephone. It’s this element of the unknown that gives the movie its biggest chills.

It’s not the first time such a plot device has been used, and I’m sure it’s not the last; but it’s certainly one of the cleverest uses I have ever experienced. During the first hour of the movie you have this slow thudding feeling of dread as the movies story builds, and with the odd bit of humour thrown in it’s a slow running rollercoaster of emotion that just keeps getting higher and higher. There was a massive portion of time where I believed that Pontypool was possibly the best movie I have seen all year.

Like all good things they most end, but for me Pontypool ended an hour after it started as the movie transformed from sheer terror, to downright stupidity. Things went so downhill and so totally random that it was hard to comprehend that this was the movie that just an hour a few minutes earlier had me literally on the end of my seat.

It’s hard to describe where the stupidity began, but I suspect it was as soon as the horror you had heard about had to transform to become something that you actually see. And maybe had the movie kept on the path of being three characters caught in a terrible situation by the unknown then we might well have been looking at Pontypool as being one of the biggest horror movies of the year, much in the same way low budget shocker The Blair Witch Project took the world by storm.

There are some really great bits to the movie aside the horror, the most notable being that having told Pontypool’s residents of an impending doom that a group of performers “Lawrence and the Arabians” turn up to sing a song from the Lawrence Of Arabia musical showing at a local theatre; the ultimate in random placing but a nice release for anyone watching who had been disturbed by events just moments before.

Pontypool is far from being what I consider to be a right off; it has some very good moments and is as a whole package pretty good indeed. It just failed to live up to earlier expectations and as a result for me, ended in disappointment. This being said, I’d certainly recommend anyone with an interest in horror to see this movie because if nothing else it does provide the best horrific build up I have seen in many, many years!