Pontypool
I'd been wanting to see this one for a while, and it finally came on Netflix. I thought to myself, hm, perhaps I should not watch a zombie-esque movie at home, alone, after dark, not long before I need to head to bed. Surprisingly, it didn't freak me out in the zombie-ish way, it freaked me out in that after it was done, I had to run out to get dinner, and that involved letting people talk to me.
So it's a zombie-ish kind of plague thing that makes people kill each other. Nicely filmed pretty much entirely inside the radio station in the small town of Pontypool, Canada. They do a great job of ratcheting up the tension given that you hardly see any of the action, and just hear about it as people call in.
But the twist on the standard here is that it's, essentially, a semiotic plague. People aren't infected by being bitten or through blood contact or catching a virus out of the air, they get it by understanding an 'infected' word - not hearing it, understanding it. The details aren't ever fully understood - someone seems to catch the plague off of a word said by an uninfected person, and clearly not everything infected people say is contagious. During the film, English has infected words, but French seems, thus far, to be safe (lucky Canadians).
The bilingual avenue there is a really neat one to have handy - everyone reliably knows at least basic french - and leads to my favorite scene in the movie, when the radio station's channel is briefly taken over by a french language transmission, which they translate into English for their listeners: Refrain from speaking to loved ones. Especially avoid using terms of endearment, such as 'honey, and 'sweetheart.' Do not translate this message. That scene sent shivers up my spine.
And the catching of the plague is very interestingly done, with people glitching on certain words, and repeating them (like an attempted immune response, someone wonders at one point - trying to make the word lose meaning, so they can't understand it, and thus can't be infected by it. Maybe). Makes you twitchy every time someone stumbles over what they are saying.
And then there's the end.
Shockjock guy and the producer lady are able to save her from the plague by getting her to switch the meaning of the word that infected her, and sort of blurring up that word enough that it/she becomes uninfected. So he goes on the radio to try to tell people how this works, but it's hard to clearly communicate the fact that you need to not clearly communicate, and his radio broadcast just sort of devolves, and then he goes into this speech that is english, and makes sense as far as individual words go, but the context seems to be missing, or something. Like, I know what those words _mean_, but not what you are saying. Which is, I think, the point. And then everything blows up.
And then there's more radio broadcasts from elsewhere over the credits, making it clear that this is still spreading, and then there is a bizarro scene with our two protagonists (who we have very good reason to assume are dead), and again, the words make sense, but literally nothing else about the scene does. It seems to me that the film decided that narrative itself was infected, and sought to avoid clear communication there, too.
Which... works, in an odd way. Meta as all hell, sure, but there's a certain kind of logic to the fact that only completely random nonsensical things can work, so when the whole movie goes there, it feels rather more fitting than it would otherwise. Which isn't to say that it makes sense in the world, as it were, but again: zombies, as done by the MCM department (well, the MCM department without k_beckett, at least. He would have had more zombies).
So yes. Strange, but good, and interesting. 4 stars. Not for you if weird is not your thing, but there are a few really great low-gore, low-jump factor horror movie moments, and it was an interesting twist, even if it makes me not want to let anyone talk to me tomorrow.
So it's a zombie-ish kind of plague thing that makes people kill each other. Nicely filmed pretty much entirely inside the radio station in the small town of Pontypool, Canada. They do a great job of ratcheting up the tension given that you hardly see any of the action, and just hear about it as people call in.
But the twist on the standard here is that it's, essentially, a semiotic plague. People aren't infected by being bitten or through blood contact or catching a virus out of the air, they get it by understanding an 'infected' word - not hearing it, understanding it. The details aren't ever fully understood - someone seems to catch the plague off of a word said by an uninfected person, and clearly not everything infected people say is contagious. During the film, English has infected words, but French seems, thus far, to be safe (lucky Canadians).
The bilingual avenue there is a really neat one to have handy - everyone reliably knows at least basic french - and leads to my favorite scene in the movie, when the radio station's channel is briefly taken over by a french language transmission, which they translate into English for their listeners: Refrain from speaking to loved ones. Especially avoid using terms of endearment, such as 'honey, and 'sweetheart.' Do not translate this message. That scene sent shivers up my spine.
And the catching of the plague is very interestingly done, with people glitching on certain words, and repeating them (like an attempted immune response, someone wonders at one point - trying to make the word lose meaning, so they can't understand it, and thus can't be infected by it. Maybe). Makes you twitchy every time someone stumbles over what they are saying.
And then there's the end.
Shockjock guy and the producer lady are able to save her from the plague by getting her to switch the meaning of the word that infected her, and sort of blurring up that word enough that it/she becomes uninfected. So he goes on the radio to try to tell people how this works, but it's hard to clearly communicate the fact that you need to not clearly communicate, and his radio broadcast just sort of devolves, and then he goes into this speech that is english, and makes sense as far as individual words go, but the context seems to be missing, or something. Like, I know what those words _mean_, but not what you are saying. Which is, I think, the point. And then everything blows up.
And then there's more radio broadcasts from elsewhere over the credits, making it clear that this is still spreading, and then there is a bizarro scene with our two protagonists (who we have very good reason to assume are dead), and again, the words make sense, but literally nothing else about the scene does. It seems to me that the film decided that narrative itself was infected, and sought to avoid clear communication there, too.
Which... works, in an odd way. Meta as all hell, sure, but there's a certain kind of logic to the fact that only completely random nonsensical things can work, so when the whole movie goes there, it feels rather more fitting than it would otherwise. Which isn't to say that it makes sense in the world, as it were, but again: zombies, as done by the MCM department (well, the MCM department without k_beckett, at least. He would have had more zombies).
So yes. Strange, but good, and interesting. 4 stars. Not for you if weird is not your thing, but there are a few really great low-gore, low-jump factor horror movie moments, and it was an interesting twist, even if it makes me not want to let anyone talk to me tomorrow.