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Pontypool Analysis Screamimng, Plot, Characters, Key Ideas - Coggle Diagram
Pontypool Analysis 
Influences
White Zombie
In the film White Zombie, the infection is controlled by Legendaire who uses voodoo.
The infections in both films are comparable due to them acting like a virus and the infected becoming completely disenfranchised.
War of the Worlds
The famous radio play by Orson Wells would have had to have some influence on Pontypool. The radio play is set like a news report on the radio about aliens invading Earth.
Pontypool flips the narrative and now the people in the radio station are the ones that don't know what is going on and have to find out through experience.
Plot
Sydney receives a phone call while in the sound booth telling her that her children had become infected by the virus.
After the credits there is a scene that shows Sydney and Grant after a long period of time and shows how they have adapted to the reality of the situation.
Grant and Sydney are able to trick the virus due to Dr. Mendez's theory that only certain words in the English language were infected.
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Stuck in an underground radio station with a wild blizzard above, a radio host and his crew report on the weather of that day and field calls the citizens of their town of Pontypool.
After hours of hiding and attempting to avoid the virus, their quarantine breaks, and the virus infects Sydney, but Grant convinces her that the word she is repeating is not what it actually means.
Grant and Sydney, while figuring out how to combat the virus, are too late to cure the rest of Pontypool due to the air strike that is targeted at Pontypool.
Through calls to their station, the crew learns about an auditory virus spreading throughout Pontypool. Ken becomes infected and subsequently explodes into a pool of blood. The crew, now joined by an outside character Dr. Mendez, hide away in their recording booth.
Characters
Dr. Mendez
A doctor who stumbles up on this group and hypothesizes that a virus has infected certain words in the English language; only certain words infect certain people who then find another infected person to kill themselves with.
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Sydney Briar
Grant's producer and station manager who sticks by Grant as their friends and coworkers slowly start succumbing to the virus, before she herself begins to exhibit symptoms.
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Grant Mazzy
An eccentric radio announcer whose shock jock style and on-air persona create the entertainment of both the radio show and the movie as a whole.
Grant complains about the BBC creating chaos with incorrect conjecture of terrorism, he reflects on the military doing it’s job of killing citizens outside who are infected, and he realizes that it is very possible that he is a huge vector of the plague.
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Ken Loney
Copper reporter for the radio station, who is detailing what she sees "rioters" doing, and it's her call that gets interrupted by a French message. Ken then calls back while being attacked and that's the last we hear from her.
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Key Ideas
Effective Communication
Kill is Kiss
The reason kill is kiss confuses the virus, is because the more you repeat the word, the deeper you are into being infected, and because language has no meaning at this point, you can say a different word and confuse the virus.
Sydney and Grant were able to find confusing and contradicting phrases or words to say to disinfect people on the air.
Certain words or languages were able to subside effects of the virus or avoid it. This was discovered upon Dr. Mendez realizing when he spoke Armenian that the virus only affected words of the English language.
Claustrophobia
Characters such as Sydney and Grant have to lock themselves in the equipment room and sound booth to protect themselves from the mob. Unfortunately the mob was able to break into the sound booth and Sydney became infected.
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Spreading Viruses
In a very literal sense, language is the virus.
The infected make contagious utterances that trickle a chain reaction of words and phrases which completely zombify the individual.
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