It’s ironic that the downfall of a film centered on the destructive power of words is the script. “Pontypool’s” script is about a zombie pandemic (director Bruce McDonald insists that the infected are not zombies but ‘conversationalists,’ but honestly they are zombies) which takes place in the Ontario town of Pontypool. The script, sadly, is full of urgent jibber-jabber that merely hints at a story but does not give satisfaction.
Writer Tony Burgess, who adapted his own novel, structures his script using the radio play “War of the Worlds” as a template. This micro-budget film takes place almost entirely in a one-horse radio station à la Orson Wells’ masterpiece, where disc jockey cum news announcer Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) unwillingly and ungraciously announces school closings, lost pets, and the weather. There are hints that he was once a bigger fish in a bigger pond, but these hints never become facts. Unfortunately, nothing about him grows into full-featured humanity. The same can be said for the characters.
Thinly-drawn characters can be just fine in a genre film if the film offers other cool things, like a great story or impressive visuals. At the very least, a genre film without depth has got to make sense. The scripted words coming from the mouths of the human simulacra have to provide a modicum of connection to one another. But in “Pontypool,” as the action finally starts to ramp up, Mazzy and his radio producer (played by McHattie’s real-life wife, Lisa Houle) yakety-yak with increasing urgency and decreasing intelligibility. As good belief-suspending audience members, we work hard to fill the plot’s holes and avert our eyes where logical chasms cannot be bridged. But here, too much heavy lifting is left to the audience
Another scriptural let-down is that the genesis of the mini-zombie apocalypse, which we spent a long, long 96 minutes trying to figure out is nonsensical and not even scary.
As a respite for your ears, watch “A Quiet Place” (2018) in which there is no unnecessary blether.
