"What's Pontypool?" you ask. Well...
Pontypool (streaming
on Netflix)
If Twilight Zone had never gone off the air, it might have eventually produced stories this weird. That’s my way of saying I loved it.
Mazzy, Sydney, and Laurel-Ann work at the only radio station
in the tiny Canadian town of Pontypool, Ontario. It’s a breeze of a town, with
one main road, and their “weather helicopter” is a guy in a car who parks on top
of the tallest hill. We spend the entire movie with the radio jockey and his
producers as they get reports of a hostage situation on the roads, and then of
a mob striking a doctor’s office, and then the office literally exploding… with
people. What they learn and have to report is increasingly strange, baffling
and inviting both them and you to piece together what nightmare is befalling
their town out there.
It harkens back to old radio dramas, except rather than
depriving you of a visual medium, you’re instead put alongside these radio
employees in their little station, hoping for dispatches from someone who knows
anything, or if they can pray for it, for help.
It could just be a paranoid thriller from thereon and be a
totally successful movie. But Pontypool doesn’t settle for that. Its cast is
quixotic, from Mazzy, the rambling disc jockey who’s probably on the verge of
being fired, to the impossibly racist music guests who’s forced to put on the
air while his partners are following the story, to all the baffling bits of
town lore that sprout up as people begin dropping.
In many ways this feels like a bunch of characters cut out
of a Coen Brothers movie, trapped in a radio station, being forced to report on
the strangest disaster ever. Especially if you have U.S. Netflix, I can’t
recommend it enough.
Southbound (rentable
on Amazon, iTunes, and Youtube for 3.99)
I’m happy to see Anthology Horror is growing in support and
popularity. Trick R Treat and V/H/S are particular favorites of mine, and
Southbound comes from a few of the same people who produced V/H/S. This time
out they’ve made a collection of short films that loosely interlink, all on the
theme of traveling along a stretch of abandoned road. The stories include people
who break down and have to spend the night with odd locals, a man running into
a hospital only to find it vacant, and a late-night attack on a roadside motel.
None of the premises are bad, they’re all just well-worn. The
trouble is that few if any of the entries feel like complete stories. Those
girls spend the night with creepy locals, something creepy happens to them, and…
that’s it. It’s a far cry from Trick R Treat’s Halloween pranksters who prank a
local girl, only to have their prank come alive and stalk them.
The merit instead is that one story’s non-conclusion leads
into the start of another. The survivor of one story runs into the street in
the middle of the night as the protagonist of the next drives through. One
story’s mysterious voice on a phone winds up belonging to a character in the
next story, and that’s very creepy for a moment. The movie ends on its
cleverest connection, which I promise not to spoil.
But those moments of connective tissue don’t create a sense
of a full world, and don’t make up for a lack of satisfying arcs in the
individual stories.
Counter est. March 2, 2008
The last part of Pontypool didn't quite live up to the first part for me, but it was an effective and unique film.
ReplyDeleteYay for building up your lung function. And for distractions from the pain.
ReplyDeleteI hope the neuromuscular syndrome issues can be balanced against the improvements.
Pontypool sounds like a fun movie. (We love Cohen brothers, except for when they don't get too morbid.)
ReplyDeleteI can't believe I haven't heard of Pontypool before! I grew up in a genuinely weird small Ontario town. There's a nascent sub-genre of horror fiction called "Canadian gothic", and it always makes me smile how much of the really creepy stuff is just observational.
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