One of those rare horror movies that chases a new idea and is dead serious about the pursuit. This is some intense shit, not for its gore or dread, but for the feverish puzzle that it lays at our feet. There’s no other movie exactly like it, though it feels like a regular zombie flick when the story first gets rolling. It sort of is one, too, but the virus here is transmitted through conversation—words themselves are pure poison in a literal sense—and the only way anyone can figure out how to fight it is via intellectual means rather than physical confrontation. We don’t learn enough about it. Our information is fractured and missing important details, which is intentional and is true of all good zombie movies. No one ever knows what the hell is going on. The difference here is that this story hints at an elusive logic at work to the sudden epidemic of crazed face-biter people in a tiny, snow-swarmed Ontario town. It leaves with you with a lot to argue about afterward with your friends—if they were able to hang with its interior set-bound drama that relates most of its violence secondhand and lives in white-hot confusion.
Freak-brained novelist Tony Burgess wrote the script, based on his book Pontypool Changes Everything. The film is less an adaptation of the source than it is a companion piece story set in the same weird world, cleverly designed here for a low-budget film. The setting: a small-time radio station studio where a whiskey-voiced and whiskey-drinking morning show personality (a great Stephen McHattie, a sixty-something character-actor with wrinkly road maps all over his face) waxes bohemian over the airwaves. He’s a man used to outlandish phone calls, unsubstantiated information and one-sided conversations. He chooses his words carefully. He’s either the worst man or the best man to face off against this strange threat. That’s another topic thrown onto your lap for debate.