Pontypool Review

"Pontypool. Pontypool. Pantypool. Pont du Flaque. What does it mean?"

If, as William S Burroughs liked to assert, language is a virus, then it is hard to tell whether shock jock Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is better suited to be its carrier or its cure. A cynical wordsmith, he deploys rampant puns, free associations, metaphorical excursions and free-wheeling irony to shake up his audience from their everyday existences - and now that he has been fired from his job in the big smoke, his special brand of verbal provocation is being visited upon small-town Pontypool, Ontario.

There, one snowy Valentine's Day morning, in the church basement that serves as the local station's studio, adoring 'technical cowgirl' Laurel-Ann (Georgina Reilly) looks on as Grant spars with his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) over what is fit to be broadcast, when calls begin to come in reporting outbursts of aberrant behaviour in the community. No official confirmation or explanation is forthcoming on the wires, but soon even the station's own weather reporter Ken Loney (Rick Roberts) is phoning in with an eyewitness account of a violent riot around the offices of one Dr Mendez, and then of even stranger, more horrific goings-on.

BBC Television's Nigel Healing (Daniel Fathers) gets in touch live, seeking further information on the unfolding events and speculating that French separatists may be behind the unrest - something that sounds bizarre, but for the fact that the transmission is interrupted not long afterwards by an alarming message in French. And then, out of the blue, a 'herd' of babbling, maniacal Pontypoolers arrives outside the station, as does the ranting Mendez himself (Hrant Alianak). Facing up to this outbreak of madness with a mixture of grizzled cool and increased confusion, the beleaguered Grant starts to wonder whether he may himself be a 'host' in more senses than one, as something beyond mere words spreads rapidly over the chill air. The time has at last come for Grant to unleash his full 'Mazzy-ness' - and the world may never be the same again.