Here's one you may have missed

Word of mouth travels fast*.  From one Internet source to my best friend to me came the recommendation to check out an independent horror film that slipped by unnoticed: Pontypool.  And while I'd like to write up a synopsis of the film, I think I'd be doing both of my readers a great disservice by revealing much of the story, so you'll have to excuse me as I only outline the basics.

The entirety of the story takes place inside a radio station, with much of the action happening inside the DJ booth.  We follow the beginnings of a normal day for the new DJ Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), his station manager Laurel-Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly), who has just returned from a tour in Afghanistan, and their producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) devolve into madness as chilling and spotty accounts of acts of mob violence trickle in through the phone lines.

Each phone call--most frequently from the radio station's "chopper" weatherman Ken Loney (Rick Roberts)--provides a a glimpse of the sudden "insurgency" in the small Canadian town of Pontypool.  The audience never sees the majority of the action (and nothing that happens outside the station's walls), but Loney acts as our eyes and ears in the field, and great pains have been taken with the script to ensure that despite "telling rather than showing" the action outside, the narration is visceral and urgent.  Scenes of muddled, chanting caricatures of humanity congesting the streets and meting out acts of bizarre violence are told in vivid imagery, without feeling like they're being soliloquized from above the carnage.  Most of the outside narrative comes from a character in middle of it all, and as he describes it, it feels like he's in the guts of something miserable.

Giving no more information than is revealed on the DVD case, the "insurgency" is actually yet another zombie Armageddon (the first one for the characters in the movie, but for the viewer, the four-thousandth or so).  Director Bruce McDonald takes full advantage of the action being set inside a radio station and the interplay of the setting and story.  Grant Mazzy is restricted from speculating to his listening audience on the cause of the nightmare simmering just outside--he is a reporter making do with scant information--giving Briar and Drummond plausible reason to initially believe that the sparse and conflicting accounts add up to a hoax.  Whereas in many zombie films the characters seem skeptical of the situation, even when the situation is sinking its teeth into their trachea, Pontypool allows the audience to dabble in the realms of security for a bit longer, unsure of when swarming, bloodthirsty inevitability will claw its way into the studio.

And while Pontypool could have slid by on being yet another member of The Night of the Living Dead's horde of clones, the script is admirable in that the plot is just as much about how the zombie infection is spread as it is the characters trying to survive it.  It's a truly creative effort and a new take on the zombocalypse, and is ultimately both the movie's biggest strength and weakness.  Midway into the second act, the audience and characters are told--firsthand--how the zombie plague spreads.  And yet, the characters "discover" this during a tense standoff in the third act, by which point it seems extraneous.

Understandably, the characters don't have the insight to know that they're inside a movie and that the information they received anonymously half an hour ago is the key to their situation now, but the conversation wherein one of the characters pieces together the explanation to a heretofore unknown virus drops more technobabble on the audience than an episode of The Next Generation.  The audience was already told once firsthand, and bogging the climax down to have this information so agonizingly and unnecessarily repeated seems like the writer and director wanted to make sure to speak slowly and in simple words for us idiots in the audience.

Similarly, the scene where the "cure" to the zombie infection is discovered seems like all the key components of a good horror movie came together, but without any way to wrap it up.  One of the characters succumbs to the infection and, at the zero-hour, is miraculously saved from transformation in a moment that stands out as cheesy even by horror movie standards, shoe-horning an absolutely unexpected romance angle in during the final ten minutes, giving it no time to develop or have any real significance.

Now, allow a full 180 in the review and to add that, in spite of the corniness of the aforementioned scene, it does give our protagonists an opportunity take to the airwaves one last time to deliver one of the most poignant monologues to ever end with the words "you cocksuckers."  Gotta give it points for that.  Also there's a pretty good message in there about not being incited into violent retribution in the face of terrorism if you're into that sort of thing.

If you're a fan of the horror genre and are looking for something different, Pontypool will deliver.  It's short on cheap scares, but Rick Roberts did a fantastic job as the frantic call-in weatherman Ken Loney and delivers chills by the dozens.  And while the effects budget was slim, Pontypool oozes atmosphere what it lacks in raw gore.  Definitely check it out.  You could do a lot, lot worse.  Like paying money to watch Saw 3 through 6.  Please don't do that.

*If you see the movie, you'll see what I did there.