ne virus has crippled a rural Canadian town. It’s up to Grant Mazzy, the shock jock and his producer Sydney Briar to save Pontypool and all of Canada. So celebrate your favorite DJ this month, maybe request something besides The Macarena and watch Pontypool.
Trailer
The Movie
Sandy- Canadian zombies????? I’m in, eh?!
The opening credit sequence is interesting and super visually pleasing, I really liked it a lot.
Sandy- Did you catch the camel references? What’s with that?
Jon- I completely missed the camel references. Was it about camel toes or humps?
Sandy- Is Grant Mazzy an asshole?
Jon- Grant Mazzy, the shock jock, is something of an asshole but I think that’s his on air persona. He definitely has a softer side somewhere underneath it. He seems to genuinely care for Laurel-Anne.
Sandy- How awesome is it that the “sunshine chopper” is just some dude’s Dodge Dart up on a hill with sound effects he’s operating inside the car while he spies on the town from “above”?
Jon- Ken and his sunshine chopper car are amazing. I like to imagine that all radio stations actually do traffic this way. They can’t all have a budget for a helicopter.
Jon: How do you feel about fake news choppers? Not that the news is fake but the chopper is fake.
Sandy: I think it's hilarious and definitely more eco-conscious than a real chopper. I kind of wish he rode a motorcycle that they called The Sunshine Chopper though.
Sandy- Best mug ever? (The only acceptable answer is “yes” or “yes ma’am”. An image of a camel with the words”wanna hump” on it??? Brilliant. BRILLIANT I TELL YOU!)
Jon- It’s a pretty good mug. Maybe not quite brilliant but close. I tend to prefer my mugs to be heat sensitive so when you pour hot coffee into it you get some turd giving you the finger.
Sandy- Was the entire family that came into the radio station to sing on the air made up of a bunch of random white Canadians in blackface, or was it just that I was watching at 2:30am and maybe not seeing clearly?
Jon- No you saw that clearly. They dressed as Arabs and colored their faces for their radio performance.
Jon: Lawrence and the Arabians are an odd touch. Do you need to dress up to do a radio spot?
Sandy: This whole scene was really wacky and pretty uncomfortable to watch.
Jon- It’s odd to go to all that to perform on the radio knowing that it’s not a visual medium. Maybe it helps them feel in character.
Sandy- Where the fuck is Ken?
Jon- Ken is everywhere. He’s outside the doctor’s office at one point and hiding in a silo at another.
Sandy- How the fuck is anyone supposed to get the gist of a warning message if they aren’t supposed to translate it to the language they understand? And how would they know they weren’t supposed to translate it if they never translated it in the first place?? This logic, or lack of logic more aptly, makes me feel violently irritated. I actually did like the movie overall visually, but I don’t feel satisfied by it mentally. I’m left with a MILLION unanswered questions that have me sitting here wondering if I don’t get it because I had a stroke while watching it or if I don’t get it because it doesn’t make sense?
Jon- I think this is the part where 2 AM hurt. They’re grasping at straws looking for a solution. I think the idea of the warning message and not translating it aloud are the key. The virus seems to only affect the spoken word not written. It’s as much a curse as a virus.
Sandy- Is that the point since they had to make words “not words anymore” or whatever the fuck was happening?
Jon- Exactly. When they do the whole kill is kiss routine they are taking the meaning of the trigger word away and making it a nonsense word and stripping the power of the virus away.
Sandy- What the fuck does “some words are contaminated” mean??? WHICH WORDS??? And are they the same for every person, or does each person have their own “contaminated” word to set them off??? Are there multiple “contaminated” words for each person, or is it just one?? There’s something about the concept of this movie that reminds me very much of Stephen King’s Cell, only wayyyy more convoluted and nonsensical. It’s an interesting idea because of its uniqueness and absurdity, but there just wasn’t enough for me to grasp onto. The way they filmed it was smart for budgeting purposes and it would have worked for me if it hadn’t gone so far off the fucking rails in my mind.
Jon- This is what makes me like it so much. Everyone seems to have a different trigger word so you can’t be certain what word it will be. To me, this makes it more tense because you know Grant, in particular, can’t stop talking and every word is Russian Roulette.
Sandy- -Why the fuck won’t Dr Mendez shut the fuck up after he tells them all not to speak??? I also cannot begin to express how incredibly irritating it is to me that they didn’t hide under the desk where the infected people wouldn’t notice them when they were in the sound booth.
Jon- I think Dr. Mendez is one of those people who just babbles away when he’s nervous. He’s also one of those really smart guys who likes to talk a lot so everyone knows how smart he thinks he is.
Sandy- Why the fuck could that lady whose name I’ve already forgotten but will from now on refer to as “Twat” say what I presume was her “contaminated” word after Grant Mazzy somehow figured out how to cure her?
Jon- She was “cured” so I think she felt safe saying it kind of like how people act when they believe they are immune from any virus.
Sandy- Does that mean that if you confuse yourself on the meaning of it while it’s infecting you and the infection is cured in that moment because of your confusion, it’ll never infect you again even though you’ll understand it again afterwards????
Jon- That’s how I understood it.
Sandy- WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??? I enjoyed the strange Sin City-esque aside flashes about the people who had killed each other and themselves, it was visually interesting. But I also found that to be confusing because it was Mazzy’s voice and it seemed like he was supposed to be announcing what he was saying over the radio, but how the fuck could he have known about the details of what happened with those specific people? Nobody could find Ken for quite a while, so I know he wasn’t the one giving the info... and also how the fuck would Ken know if he was hiding in a goddamn silo or whereverthefuck he was? And what was with that little old timey gangster blip with Mazzy and Twat after the end credits?
Jon- I think that’s similar to parts of Zombieland and is meant to demonstrate what could happen to Grant and Sydney if the infected got them. It’s a bit whimsical as is the credits scene although I don’t get that either.
Sandy- Was it only the one town that was affected by this “word virus” or was it the whole world?? And why was it only English words that were “contaminated”??
Jon- It wasn’t the only town. There are news reports over the credits that imply that the virus spread to other parts of Canada at the very least. I think the fact that it only appears to affect English is a social commentary or just what they used to make the movie work.
Sandy- AND IF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE INFECTED WERE MUMBLING NONSENSE, WHY WOULDN’T THE VIRUS CURE ITSELF EVERY TIME SOMEONE CAUGHT IT???
-JON! I NEED ANSWERS!!
Jon- It seemed like they latched onto phrases after they were infected. The horde that attacked the radio station were all saying the same phrase because it was the most recent thing they heard. The trigger word makes them sort of like a violent parrot, repeating things you say to it while trying to tear your eyes out.
Jon: Have you seen Mrs. French’s cat?
Sandy: Only in my dreams. Is the missing cat poster what originally caused all of this shit? Can you get sick if you read the word to yourself in your own head??
Jon: Grant Mazzy is definitely Canadian Don Imus right?
Sandy: I can definitely see some similarities between the two.
Jon: Grant takes no prisoners but what prisoners would a DJ have to take?
Sandy: l imagine that taking prisoners is the only way Mazzy can get a date.
Jon: When do you call 911?
Sandy: Me personally? Specifically in this scenario? When Ken first disappeared from contact probably.
Jon: How much money would you have to make to do Sidney’s job with Grant?
Sandy: We live in The United States, I'd do that shit for some mediocre health insurance.
Jon: Should we have a 912 number for things that aren’t quite emergencies?
Sandy: No way any one would get that shit right. 1 and 2 are right next to each other on all phones... People can't handle that kind of responsibility - everyone would still think their dumbass shit was an emergency anyway.
Jon: What does an explosion of people look like? Not an exploding person but people exploding out of something.
Sandy: I imagine it's something like what happens every year at Christmastime somewhere in the USA when people stampede to get into a store with a good holiday sale or a limited supply of the hot new toy, but in reverse?
Jon: Should you ever put someone as panicked as Ken on the radio?
Sandy: Absolutely. It's far more compelling.
Jon: The obituaries in Pontypool are numerous. Ever heard a radio station do obituaries for townspeople? Not a celebrity but just some guy up the road.
Sandy: Maybe that's a small town thing? I just don't get how he had that fucking information though. WHO THE FUCK TOLD HIM THOSE DETAILS??
Jon: Ever run face first into plexiglass? Repeatedly?
Sandy: No, but I did walk into a screen door and knock it off its tracks once. Only once though.
Jon: Why does Dr. John Mendez say it could destroy your world? Is he from a different world?
Sandy: Maybe he meant in a sexual way.
Jon: If English is the only language infected, how fucked are you?
Sandy: I might be able to communicate in a jumbled mess of poorly spoken Spanish and German.
Jon: Who killed the kid? And should the one who killed the kid kill the doctor too?
Sandy: They both killed that fucking kid, but if one of them knew they had dealt the final deadly blow and wanted to be heroic, they should have volunteered to kill the doctor so the other one could stay a murdering virgin.
Jon: Does your immune system react to infected words?
Sandy: Yes, but for me, every time someone says "supposably" l involuntarily kick them as hard as I can in the junk.
Lessons
Stop calling it Seasonal Affective Disorder. Giving a serious chemical imbalance a silly acronym like SAD trivializes Seasonal Depression. We don’t need fun acronyms for illnesses.
Read messages to yourself before you read them to everyone else. This is how anchors and anyone who reads aloud as part of their job gets in trouble and eventually fired. Don’t be Ron Burgundy.
Don’t be over excited by someone exploding. It’s pretty gross. The explosion of another human being is a somber occasion.
