Pontypool

Based on his own novel Pontypool Changes Everything, Tony Burgess' claustrophobic adaptation is a low-budget horror producer's dream, being largely set in one church basement where the town's radio station receives stories about the end of the world happening outside.

Keeping the audience-friendly destruction off-screen is seemingly audience-interest suicide, but Burgess' script and McDonald's (widescreen) direction makes a virtue of the dank, grey basement, moving the handful of characters into smaller and smaller rooms as the apocalypse comes knocking.

And while recent zombie movies have peppered the screen with ambulant deceased, Pontypool is closer in spirit to John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 and George A. Romero's Night Of The Living Dead (and The Crazies), as much out of budget constraint as affection.

But, McDonald does wonders with the script that hints at something awry early on (a confused woman babbling on a snowy road) and slowly but surely builds the trepidation as washed-up shock jock Mazzy (Watchmen's McHattie), his producer Sydney (Houle), and young, perky Iraq vet researcher Laurel Ann (Reilly) try to figure out if reports coming in of townsfolk slaughtering each other are some elaborate prank.

The symptoms of the virus are best discovered when watching the film, but a bizarre musical troupe (including an Osama Bin Laden-alike) are clearly infected while everything appears normal.  And as one of the three radio workers succumbs, their attempts to deal with the situation moves the film over into pure Horror.

Ignore the shaky tongue-tied opening fifteen minutes; when Pontypool gets its words in order it reminds you how much creepy fun can be had in keeping the horror tantalisingly offscreen.

Despite the single location, there is much more going on here than can be had in a single viewing, and like Romero's Dead films, Pontypool's monsters can be seen in a surprisingly sympathetic light.

Refusing to cop out, the ending needs paying close attention to but is a satisfying climax to a surprising terror treat.

Spread the word now.

Rob Daniel