Part of a new breed of highbrow “concept” horror that shrugs off and/or embraces the constraints of limited production means and instead picks at the nasty mental scabs of what truly unnerves, Pontypool is a unique thriller that has the twin advantages of a provocative premise and a superb cast. Together, these things hold an audience’s attention for the bulk of the movie’s running time, holding at bay some frustrations with a third act that doesn’t seem quite certain of which direction to head or what sort of energy level to embrace.

Adapted by Tony Burgess from his own book, Pontypool Changes Everything, and directed by Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo, The Tracey Fragments), Pontypool is a tightly wound, genre-bending psychological thriller, starring Stephen McHattie (Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl,
in Watchmen), about the wild spread of a deadly virus. Spare in design but exquisitely shot on the new “Red One” HD camera, the film sparks memories of the claustrophic feelings of American pre-independent cinema of the early 1980s, when even the inclusion of paid extras was a luxury that couldn’t be afforded.

Exuding gruff charisma, McHattie (above right) stars as radio deejay Grant Mazzy, who’s been kicked off the big city airwaves and has just recently taken a job as early morning host of Radio 660’s “The Beacon,” in the small Canadian town of Pontypool. The cramped quarters are a long way from the zenith of his days as a top-shelf shock-jock; in fact, the station broadcasts from the basement of the town’s only church, and Mazzy’s entire staff consists of producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle, above left) and Afghanistan veteran turned knob-twirling techie Laurel Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly).

What begins as just another brutal winter morning quickly becomes something more intriguing. Starting with their off-site “eye in the sky” helicopter reporter (in actuality a guy simply perched on a hill at the edge of town), and continuing with garbled phone calls from eyewitnesses, bizarre reports start streaming in of people committing horrendous acts of violence against one another — even biting and mauling their friends and family. But there’s nothing coming in on the official news wires. So is any of this really happening? In a twist worthy of Lost, the Beacon’s radio signal is then interrupted with a message in French that, among other things, warns against communicating verbal affection to loved ones… and translating the message into English. Whoops, too late: Mazzy has read it over the air.

As fractured reports of more violence trickle in, there’s also news of strange speech patterns — marauding hordes of people chanting incongruous slogans over and over. Trapped in the radio station, Mazzy and Sydney are forced to confront the possibility that this insane, seemingly viral behavior taking over the town might be somehow spreading as a result of their radio transmissions — through language itself.

With its talky, literate roots, Pontypool fits in with a new slice of genre films that consciously (sometimes a bit too consciously) eschew conventional horror formula, and the baser entertainments of brawny response. This time — in addition to the story choice of limited scope — it’s an avoidance of the word “zombie,” as if even its bare mention would somehow sully the proceedings. It may seem a quibbling criticism, but for Mazzy — a career on-his-feet thinker who has to chew up live air time with frazzled and/or incoherent guests — it seems dubious that he wouldn’t be a bit more forward-thinking and speculative about the goings-on in the outside world. That, in other words, he wouldn’t spit out the word zombie, even if only in disbelief.

This relates a bit to the overall flagging intellectual momentum of the film. It may be a bigger part of the source material, but the provocative, fascinating idea at Pontypool‘s core — rife with sociopolitical symbolism, both because of the film’s French Canadian setting and the context of recent world events, in which America has behaved with reckless impunity — doesn’t feel like it quite gets a full treatment on screen. The requisite “situational expert,” in this case a doctor (Hrant Alianak) who breaches the security of the station, adds frustratingly little of substance to the proceedings; writer Burgess puts him in a room with Mazzy, who would have all the same questions as the audience, and has the latter essentially clam up, and slow-peddle things. One doesn’t need definitve answers about the menace within the movie, but probing questions are essential to keep driving an audience’s bewilderment and anxiety.

Also, Mazzy is such an interesting character — and, in a superlative performance, McHattie embodies him
with such grizzled, devil-may-care confidence, coming across as a
long-lost sibling of Hugh Laurie on House — that it’s a bit of disappointment that Pontypool doesn’t pick up its pace of interaction early on, allowing for more robust interpersonal interaction that would help shade and color Sydney and Laurel Ann, who feel a bit like unequal sides in this narrative triangle. As is, though, there’s an eerie sense of hairline-fractured calm that hangs over the entire picture (in that sense, it’s very Canadian), and it’s again worth stressing that there is a Kafkaesque grip here that not a lot of movies attempt, let alone succeed at. McDonald directs the hell out of the material — utilizing an ascetic aesthetic, making smart framing choices — and there’s apparently already a sequel in the works. For these reasons and more, fans of claustrophic, character-rooted thrillers like Misery or Cube that also have a certain appreciation for arthouse fare will find plenty of merit in Pontypool. (IFC Films, unrated, 96 minutes)