Wednesday, 2 July 2025

Article: Radio Ga Ga - Pontypool

Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is a grouchy, wannabe shock jock who wishes he had Howard Stern’s numbers. The crabby presenter has been shipped out to Pontypool, Canada, to live out an audio exile of sorts for the rest of his broadcasting life. The probable reason might be Mazzy’s desire to stir the pot on small-time radio shows that wish for him to tell things straight. On the way to the isolated Pontypool radio station to host what should be another typical, sleepy morning show filled with school closures and snowy weather reports, he is jolted in his car by an unknown female standing outside. She calls something unintelligible to him before disappearing into the cold night. And so begins the lo-fi, high-concept of the movie Pontypool. A horror feature that had the marketing tagline “Shut up or die”.

To say too much about Pontypool effectively ruins its surprise. Released in 2008, amidst a boom period of Zombie horrors, the film stands out as the “thinking man’s Zombie film”. A movie which plays on the phrase “if words would kill”, Pontypool toys with the virility of speech. Its novel approach comes from the idea of a verbal virus.  Certain words in the English language have become stuck and corrupted within a victim in such a way that they quickly become mentally undone. The zombies in Pontypool aren’t “undead” but lean more towards the infected found in 28 Days Later.  The idea is far-fetched if thought about for too long. But isn’t that the way with horror movies? For some reason, we scrutinise them far more than other genres, even when they often have something interesting to say.

Tony Burgess, the author of the source novel Pontypool, purportedly hashed out the screen adaptation in 48 hours. Pontypool was also produced as a motion picture and radio play simultaneously, with the famous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds by Orson Welles utilised as the main inspiration. This is something which makes Pontypool stand out against the many Zombie iterations that have appeared since 2002. The use of airwave broadcast combined with the isolated location builds up a sense of paranoia. In the earlier half of the movie, Mazzy, his long-suffering producer Sydney (Lisa Houle), and their spirited technical assistant Laurel (Georgina Reilly) cannot be entirely sure of the audio reports that are coming back to them. One sequence involving our beloved BBC brings a sly commentary on how mainstream media condescends and twists the words of the little man. The trio know something is going on, and while they can’t be sure, they’re still more informed than the Journalist picked to report on what at the time could be a shaggy dog story. The reporter's ignorance plays well into Pontypool's idea of how poor communication can kill people. And with only the English language being contaminated, the film becomes a striking foreshadowing of how our brand of media virality is perhaps the most toxic.  

Mazzy, at the height of his grumpiness remarks that a pissed off listener is a wide-awake listener who isn’t going to change the channel. This comment, along with similar variations, can be found in all the films I’ve watched in this recent mini-series of articles. Such a statement felt damning in each entry. With each film suggesting that what a DJ says doesn't matter, as long as the audience is frothing at the mouth once it's said. In 2008, one could only dream of how bizarre and dangerous our misinformation would become. In 2025, five years after a global lockdown, Pontypool becomes an intriguing piece of foretelling fiction.

There’s something malicious about terms of endearment being a trigger for the virus, particularly as social media is becoming increasingly aggressive in almost all interactions. One only must look at how weaponised “therapy speak” and language around mental health have become to see that Pontypool was on to something.  It’s almost as if the film has cunningly forecasted that people will be quick to discard or disguise their words in favour of violence. It’s with this that Pontypool stands out as one of the stronger zombie features of the 00s. With seemingly more power to linger in the mind than the final entries that came from the lord of the genre, George A Romero. The world has never been more connected than it is now, and Pontypool’s concentrated effort in dismantling language is a disconcerting idea that penetrates more than the one found in Romero’s last affairs, which went for lofty themes but faltered in a way his first three ‘dead’ films thrived. Pontypool touches on something so primal that it doesn’t have to do too much to disturb. Film Critic Anton Bitel notes the film and its “paranoid way it portrays personal madness and social disintegration from the inside.” Many of Pontypool’s most unsettling moments stem from benign words that shift from being used to placate to becoming unknowing incubators of ailment.

All the wordplay is a good distraction from perhaps Pontypool’s weakest elements, such as the visuals. Granted, Pontypool's 2:35:1 ratio allows the type of cinematic close-ups that a grizzled character like Stephen McHattie doesn’t acquire often. The cinematography also has an ok eye for composition. However, as a film that is also a radio play, one can’t be too shocked by the lack of eye-catching imagery. There’s a crispy look to proceedings that earmarked many features of the early 00s and betrays its lower budget more than even its sparse, singular setting. Perhaps Pontypool’s biggest faux pas, though, is the entry of one Dr Mendez. A character briefly mentioned first in early radio reports, before squeezing through a window to become the type of info dump stock character that can derail proceedings. From a narrative perspective, Mendez makes sense. We see characters like this all the time, and he is the person who (should) fill in a few narrative blanks, drop off some exposition and prepare the audience for the second half of the film.  But Mendez’s appearance slows the film down considerably. Right at a time when the tension is beginning to build. Mendez is a character who’s too odd and vague to add anything of any true significance that couldn’t have been added in a far more entertaining way.

Despite this, Pontypool remains a fascinating creature. There’s something deeply primal about what’s at play in the film.  Negative reviews have focused on the absurdity of the film, yet Pontypool still works as a social metaphor for a social trauma we appear to be facing.  In Pontypool’s universe, words can kill you. And the person who may unlock the key to stopping such a pandemic is someone who needs to shut up the most. Shock Jocks like Mazzy have dinned out on their lack of accountability meal ticket. It is perhaps the most infuriating aspect of so much modern media. At the start, Mazzy is no different from the many broadcasters who utilise controversy as currency. Pontypool is daring enough to force such a character to pull his pants up and act. A pissed off listener may not change the channel, but Mazzy has the chance here to perform a far more considerable feat. Far removed from the cockamamie conspiracies that he often peddles. He can change the frequency.  Something I think many wish for when the world loses control.