Two Shades of Black

I had the opportunity yesterday to see two horror films -- "Vinyan" and "Pontypool".

I can't say that this is a genre that I actively search out but there are a few this year that caught my eye (more, perhaps, on the others later).
It was interesting study in contrast.

"Vinyan" is set in Thailand and Burma and follows a young couple (Rufus Sewell and Emmanuelle Beart) who lost their young son in the tsumani and now believe that he was actually abducted and carried off to the Burmese coastal jungle. As they embark on an increasingly frantic search, they are stripped of any veneer of civilization. Most of the film is set in the jungle. If you recall the scene with the tiger in "Apocalypse Now" or the village at the end of that film, you have an idea of the setting.

"Pontypool" is its polar opposite -- set almost entirely in a talk radio radio station in the basement of an old building, the film is about a plague that quickly infects the population of a small town, turning them into crazed, cannibals. The morning show host (Stephen McHattie) and his producer serve as the last hope for the town.

Besides the obvious differences (one is completely exterior; the other confined), the strongest difference between the two (and the reason, I thought one was an incoherent mess and the other a lot of fun) was how they dealt with the characters.

In both cases, the narrative revolves around two main characters surrounded by bit players and a large mob of feral attackers. "Vinyan" takes no time to establish its leads -- Beart & Sewell start the film unhinged and proceed to unravel -- while "Pontypool" invests the time to establish its characters.

In my opinion, horror works when you feel an emotional connection to the protagonists. I felt no connection to the characters in "Vinyan", so the film degraded to an exercise in mechanics.

"Pontypool" has a distributor in place (don't recall if "Vinyan" does). It's also Canadian, directed by Bruce McDonald and based on the book "Pontypool Changes Everything" by Tony Burgess [full disclosure: Bruce is an old family friend. I think it's one of his better efforts and there have been films of his that I didn't think worked at all]. Burgess also wrote the screenplay, which suggests to me that the book is also worth picking up, although I suspect that it be hard for me to hear the main character using anything but McHattie's after seeing the film.

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