Zombies are tired. Which is ironic given the fact that as reanimated dead bodies they should be beyond petty contrivances of the living like getting plenty of sleep. But of course I mean the horror subgenre about zombies. The last truly original iteration of this art form was 28 Day Later, where the conceit of course wasn’t that they’re zombies per se, but rather people infected with a horrible disease of an unknown origin that made them act all cannibalistic. In the same vain of “It’s-a-zombie-picture-but-not-really” comes Pontypool from Canadian filmmaking legend Bruce McDonald. Once again, thanks to McDonald’s low-key approach, zombies live again. So to speak.

What I liked about M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs is the same I liked about Pontypool. Of course you’re now snickering, “He liked Signs” but yeah, I kind of did. Lay aside for the moment the kind of ridiculous prophetic stuff and the lameness that the aliens’ Kryptonite was water of all things, and look at the base materials of Signs. It’s an alien invasion movie told from the myopic point of view of one family, alone, in the middle of nowhere, trying to survive on minimal information and supplies as presumably War of the Worlds type stuff is going down globally.

Pontypool is similarly myopic; a rather benign winter’s day at a small town radio station in Ontario goes to Hell in a hand basket really fast as seemingly diseased people besiege a doctor’s office in town. The resulting riot/panic is all heard from eye-witness reports by phone from the scene as the laid back shock jock Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) tries to decode it all for the listeners. His producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle, AKA: Mrs Stephen McHattie) doubts the veracity of some of the reports at first, but as the station’s mobbed by ravenous hordes talking in riddles, no one can deny that something strange is indeed a foot.

McHattie’s “it’s-cool-esse” performance as Mazzy makes the movie as far as I’m concerned. Without this actor, in this role, I don’t think it would have worked the same. I think aside from the perfect confluence of actor and part, it’s accessible because Mazzy is the kind of hipster a lot of movie geeks think they are, so there’s an element of sort of seeing yourself in that situation that works extraordinarily well in the film’s favour. Balancing that out though is Houle’s Sydney who’s the kind of the thematic stand-in for the person that always gets dragged to these movies by their friend/partner/lover but probably ends up enjoying them the same. In other words, she doesn’t believe it’s happening at first, but must concede the obvious.

McHattie and Houle work well together and have great chemistry, and obviously they should being married in real life and all. I, however, didn’t know that fact until after the film was over, but it made perfect sense thinking back in retrospect the way they clicked on screen together. And you have to like these people because they’re basically the entire film. I knew going in the broad strokes of what Pontypool was all about, but I was still amazed at how insular the world created by McDonalds is. He manages to convey so much with the provocation of imagination; you don’t need to see another zombie massacre, you’ve seen a dozen of them. The combination of potent character development, and giving you just enough audio stimuli to picture the hordes tearing apart small town Ontario is astounding.

Compared to Pontypool, 28 Days Later is a big budget blockbuster with its deserted London streets and eerie forebode. This movie though does just as much with less, and it’s method for zombie creation is even more insidious than simple disease clusters. This won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it’s probably the perfect horror movie for people who aren’t necessarily horror movie fans. But in reverse, anyone expecting splatter effects, blood and guts will be sorely disappointed with the exception of that one scene. I, however, was as far from disappointed as you can get. It’s just a really well done Canadian film.