12 Hidden Gem Zombie Movies You've Probably Never Seen

At first glance, Pontypool's setup is the stuff of a thousand cheap zombie flicks: a group of clashing individuals in a boxed-in, small town location (in this case Stephen McHattie's early morning shock jock radio DJ and his producer and engineer in snowy Ontario) seek to survive during a viral outbreak and the subsequent siege scenario.

And, sure, this film from punky, experimental Canadian director Bruce McDonald has a nice line in claustrophobic tension. The radio station setting allows for a situation which recalls Orson Welles's legendarily panic-inducing dramatisation of War Of The Worlds, with elements of the story told through reports coming in from the outside world in which neither we nor the characters on screen are ever quite sure what to believe.

But Pontypool is also much more unusual and innovative than that. If its setting of a handful of people in a radio booth seems talky then there's a very good reason for that. In this story, it isn't biting or blood that spreads the zombifying virus. It's words.

Pontypool is a film that is thoroughly wordy and linguistically creative. McHattie's performance is both rich in vocal tones (he has a great radio voice) and emotional complexity. It is a movie in which the sign of degeneration into zombiehood is in repetitive or misused language, attaching genuine tension to the slightest malapropism.

This is a strange and unique movie about language and communication and the abstract horror that occurs when these things break down completely. In our present mass of contradictory broadcasts and fake news about the current viral crisis, Pontypool is perhaps a more pertinent viewing experience than ever.