Pontypool (2009) - Bruce McDonald

Plot - A shock radio, Grant Mazzy, has started work on the morning shift of a local radio station in the small town of Pontypool in Ontario Canada after being fired from his previous job. One very cold morning he has a mysterious encounter with a woman who stops his car, mumbles something intelligible and runs off. Perturbed he carries on to the station and the day gets weirder as it appears there may be some sort of outbreak turning people into crazed maniacs...

Thoughts - At times it feels like a stretched out episode of the Outer Limits but it is nonetheless a quite enjoyable psychological horror. The unmistakable Stephen McHattie is very good as Mazzy, bringing an old school charm with an air of, 'what the f**k is happening here' which we the audience share. Confined to the radio booth for considerable sections of the film, McDonald manages to build tension as we are figuratively trapped in that booth with Mazzy as he's drip fed information from calls from the outside. Our imagination is allowed to fill in the details as we hear these reports. It manages to sidestep the typical zombie/infected scenario with a relatively clever conceit and there is a segment 2/3 of the way through that was nicely done to reflect that, though it does stretch credulity a bit.

Overall I quite enjoyed it.

7/10