30 in 30: A MONTH OF HORROR. PONTYPOOL
DAY 2
PONTYPOOL (2008)
If you have not seen PONTYPOOL, you should. I’m going to spoil it now. Here’s a very brief summary of what the film is about:
Radio host Grant Mazzy starts a regular day of work at the radio station in the small town of Pontypool when reports of a virus that turn people into cannibals start coming in. Mazzy and his colleagues will have to barricade themselves in the radio booth, while trying to figure out what’s really going on outside.
Pontypool is one of the most underrated movies there are. I don’t see it mentioned a whole lot when people discuss their favorite horror movies, and I can see why… this is a strange one, but one of my personal favorites.
What makes this movie strange? Well, besides the fact that it happens mostly inside just one location, it’s the threat they are facing.
The threat in this movie is not the zombie-like people who come near the radio station, the threat is language. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. How cool is that?
Talk about an innovative idea in a genre filled with recycled concepts. The thing coming for the characters life is something that surrounds us, is what we use to communicate, something so fundamental that we use it to think. We are not even speaking and we are relying on it right now. But what if it was infected somehow?
Can you imagine being forced to change languages in order to survive? Could you do it?
The idea of a virus being transmitted via language is terrifying and brilliant. Especially if you are familiar with the concept of memetics. I won’t turn these into a class about evolutionary psychology, but I will have to steal from the good-old wiki to touch on the subjects I want to.
Memetics is the study of memes, what’s a meme? Well, besides pictures of frogs on the internet, the wiki defines memes as:
“A Unit of culture” (an idea, belief, pattern of behavior, etc.) which is “hosted” in the minds of one or more individuals, and which can reproduce itself in the sense of jumping from the mind of one person to the mind of another.”
You can see where this is going right?
To me, this movie is scary because it talks or explores the idea of “memes” hijacking the human mind. That once something is utter or read, it will grow inside your head until you lose control of yourself. Incredible, but is this so hard to believe?
Are there not ideas out there in the world that make people do crazy things? And how are these ideas transmitted? That’s right, language. They say that a picture is more powerful than a thousand words, but a self-replicating “meme” is more powerful than a thousand pictures.
As you can see here, what makes this movie special is not how well acted it is (which it is), how well directed it is (which it is), or how well scored it is (which it is), is the concept. In horror films, a good concept is more than half the battle. A good frightfull idea can take your movie from a derivative zombie flick to an instant cult-classic.
I don’t know about you, but after I saw this film I didn’t want to hear what people were saying around me. Every time they opened their mouths it was a chance to get infected, and maybe I am… and since you are reading this, maybe you are too.
Tomorrow: THE CONJURING (2012)
Yesterday: THE THING (1982)
