Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald’s newest work, Pontypool, is recklessly audacious—it’s a horror film that not only accepts the drawbacks of its low budget, but practically revels in them, shamelessly flaunting its limitations.
The plot: Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), a folksy morning radio host in a small Ontario town, learns of a riot taking place down the street during airtime. The riot expands over the course of the morning, growing violent, and it’s soon reported that the rioters are chanting bizarre mantras and exhibiting zombie-like behaviour.
This claustrophobic film crackles with energy, steadily building a sense of dread through panicked phone calls and hearsay. Pontypool also has the audacity to risk being uncool, jumping between irony and earnestness with a frequency that might confuse mainstream audiences. Consider Dr. Mendez, a goofy psychiatrist with a Freudian accent who enters the picture through an unbelievable contrivance at the halfway point, giving a scientific explanation so outrageous that I can’t do it justice. Mazzy then takes the justification in an even more insane direction.
Meeting McDonald for an interview, I ask if “zombie movie” is even an accurate description of the film, considering the unusual source of the plague. “It’s one of those tags that just sort of sticks to it,” says McDonald. “Because, technically, they’re not really zombies—because zombies are the undead. And in a way, it’s more like a sci-fi movie or…a dark romance, or something. Know what I mean?”
Sort of. McDonald’s fragmented explanation hints at how the film flaunts genre conventions. “Somehow in the press,” he continues, “[zombie] is a word that kinda keeps floating around, and we’re like, ‘Well… I guess.’ It’s not a Western or a space movie or a superhero movie.”
At age 49, McDonald is short and portly, perpetually outfitted with a cowboy hat and stubble-beard. With his casual mannerisms and appearance, he’s the type of guy I would expect to encounter panning for gold in an old-timey western town. In addition to his lengthy resume of TV credits as a director-for-hire, McDonald has established himself as one of Canada’s most vibrant and exciting contemporary filmmakers, with cult hits Hard Core Logo and The Tracey Fragments among his credits.
Aside from a brief scene at the beginning, the entirety of Pontypool is set within the confines of the radio studio, with apocalyptic information gradually creeping in. I tell McDonald that the atmosphere of dread and uncertainty in a media setting reminds me of 9/11, a comparison he accepts. “It’s that modern condition: you’re in a room, you’re receiving information through your telephone, computer, TV. But you’re not really experiencing what’s going on—you’re just relying on the reach of whoever is sending you the information.”
The film also bears a resemblance to Orson Welles’ seminal War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which, masquerading as a news broadcast, sent the U.S. into a panic with gradual reports of an alien apocalypse. “I remember on late-night radio hearing bits and pieces of that,” says McDonald. “It’s such a smart and cool idea—it’s an audio experience. You’re riveted, but you’re seeing nothing.”
In fact, Pontypool, based on a book by Tony Burgess, was originally commissioned as a radio drama for the CBC, and drew some of its inspiration from the Welles broadcast. “That’s why radio dramas were so popular before television. It was like sitting around the campfire hearing stories.”
I take a risk by telling McDonald that I think Pontypool straddles the line between horror and camp, pointing in particular to the outlandishly clichéd Dr. Mendez. “Yeah!” he shouts enthusiastically. “It’s quite funny, ‘cause we wanted a guy with a strange accent that wasn’t French or German but just something like, ‘Where is this guy from?’ It’s hard to always know if it’s successful or not, but we liked that he was eccentric and odd and kinda funny, and [the audience is] like, ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’”
Pontypool will premiere at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue) on March 2 at 7 p.m. It opens in Toronto on March 6.
