I’d heard about Pontypool for a while now, but it wasn’t showing up on Netflix, but it finally appeared at my local slacker-hipster video store.
This is a story about an early-morning shockjock, who finds himself at the end of his career and stuck in a church-basement radio station in the rural Ontario community of Pontypool.
Oh, and the end of the world happens while he’s on air.
The writing and the acting and set design (there’s one set) couldn’t be tighter. It’s quirky, charismatic and original.
The DVD also includes three short movies in the extras section. One of the shorts features the lead of Pontypool as Chet Baker. The other two shorts have no apparent connection to the feature, but that’s okay, they’re surreal and weird, and that’s the sort of DVD bonus feature that’s actually worth watching.
The DVD also has the hour-long CBC radio play that preceded the movie.
Julia (my food-frakking deputy) observed that the movie seemed to be symbolic of the war in Afghanistan (I don’t think the Canadians are in Iraq). If it is, then we can add that to all the other tricky subtexts of zombie movies.
