A Dip in the Pool

Right about the time I stopped paying for Netflix's streaming service a while back, I somehow heard about this obscure Canadian horror film called Pontypool. Netflix didn't have it available on disc, so it has languished in the "Saved Discs" part of my queue literally for more than a year. But now, the new season of Arrested Development is on the horizon. I've also heard wonderful things about House of Cards. It was time to forgive Netflix for their poorly handled fee hike of 2011 and sign back up. As it turned out, Pontypool was available for streaming, and I was finally able to watch whatever earned the bit of hype I've since completely forgotten about.

Pontypool follows a morning radio shock jock in a small Ontario turn. Driving into work during a blizzard, he's startled by an incoherently muttering woman who smacks on his passenger window before vanishing into the dark. He decides to make a segment of it on his show, posing the question "when should you call 911?" But that's only the beginning of the profoundly weird. The radio station's traffic reporter calls in with news of a mob descending on a local doctor's office. As his producers strive to gather new information, the DJ tries to negotiate through harrowing reports of vacant, babbling... cannibals?

That's right, Pontypool is a zombie movie. Mostly. There is a twist, which I'll try to be a bit circumspect about in a moment. But first, let me focus on what's quite effective about the movie: the first 45 minutes. Pontypool tells a zombie story in the manner of the famous Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. We hear all kinds of horrible things, but all we see is the mounting tension of three people trapped inside a radio station. It's marvelously effective, proving that what the mind can imagine is sometimes better than what a movie can show you.

But unfortunately, the movie utterly falls apart at the halfway point. A doctor breaks into the radio station and takes refuge with our heroes. Miraculously and inexplicably, he knows exactly what's going on and deduces exactly how this strange disease is being transmitted. It's not a viral outbreak in the manner of most zombie stories, and that's quite novel. But what it is too fantastical -- or at least, revealed too ham-fistedly -- to seem believable. And it's a downhill sprint from there into schlock. The ending is the most nonsensical element of all... although you can sort of see that the writer was actually trying to go for that effect. Nonsense was kind of the point, though recognizing that doesn't make it any more enjoyable. (And if you want something truly bizarre, wait until you see what follows the end credits.)

A group of actors you aren't likely to know lead this cast. I only recognized the shock jock, Stephen McHattie, from his truly memorable guest starring appearance as a Romulan in an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. ("It's a faaaaaaaake!") The actors handle the first half of the movie wonderfully, reacting to the unfolding horror in a natural way that heightens the suspense. But they're not capable of the impossibly heavy lifting the script asks of them in the second half.

All told, I'd give Pontypool a C-. A true horror enthusiast with curiosity about a truly different take on zombies might want to give it a shot, but the average viewer won't want to bother.