Signis

Pontypool

(JPEG) (Canada, 2008, d. Bruce McDonald)

Just a very cold wintry day, Valentine’s Day, in Pontypool, Ontario. At least, it is ordinary at the start, but...

This is a very interesting and arresting thriller with touches of horror, better than most other conventional scary shows that abound these days. What makes it different?

Adapted from his novel by Tony Burgess, the film is about radio, talk and news radio. And, apart from the opening in a car when Grant Mazzey, the radio host, is driving to work early in the morning and is suddenly stopped by a mysterious woman who immediately disappears, the whole film is set in a church basement which serves as the studio and offices for a small radio station. Much of the action is confined to the broadcasting studio and many of the shots are or talking heads or reaction shots. This might not sound too inviting on paper (and the film could work quite well as a radio play) but the performances, the editing and pace as well as the unanticipated action keep us hooked.

The morning progresses normally, although Mazzey (a strikingly convincing performance from Stephen McHattie) is on something of an ego trip, supported by the technician, Laurel Ann, just back from service in Afghanistan (Georgina Reilly), clashing with the producer, Sidney Briar (Lisa Houle). Odd bits of news, questions whether the school bus will run, reports from the weather man who is said to be in a helicopter above the clouds, all very ordinary, until... When a report comes in about riots at a doctor’s office, then deaths and injuries and residents behaving suicidally, the station does not know whether it is a hoax or not. (Long memories will remember Orson Welles in 1938 and his dramatisation of The War of the Worlds.) They try to deal with the situation, even having a comic interlude when a local group, The Lawrence of Arabias, one dressed as Osama bin Laden, come in to sing, coping with emergencies as they arise (and they do) and attempting to find out what is happening from witnesses who call in.

All of the outside action takes place off screen - which keeps our imaginations going. Then comes trouble within the station and the arrival of the doctor who seems to be more than a little off and has weird explanations of what the mysterious destructive virus could be. Since this is a film about radio, explanations concern words, broadcasting, repetition, listening. (An IMDb blogger accurately referred to it as a ’semiotic zombie thriller’ - now, that is different!)

Congratulations are in order for director, Bruce McDonald, and the Canadians for making an inventive, non-exploitive, suspenseful, psychological thriller.

Peter Malone