Pontypool

A horror film set in a Canadian radio studio and told almost entirely through sound. Grant is a radio host past his best days, doing the morning show in a small town. He goes on air on a winter morning. Then the calls start coming: a crowd has gathered outside, people are attacking each other, and it is growing. The idea is there: we never see it. All the information arrives by telephone, through a reporter on the line, over the radio. The camera does not leave the basement studio. The epidemic itself is unusual. The infection travels not through blood but through language: certain words, once understood, lodge in the mind and the person begins to break down. So speech itself becomes dangerous, which for a broadcaster is a direct impasse. The source is Tony Burgess's novel; he wrote the screenplay too. Stephen McHattie plays Grant and carries nearly the whole film with his voice. Bruce McDonald directed. One of the most original examples of its kind for anyone who likes horror built on an idea and stories in confined spaces. For a viewer wanting visual horror, the film shows almost nothing, and its attempt in the final section to explain the rules is hard going for some.