On Exposition

Those of you who read my earlier post entitled "On Narrative Structure" will hopefully remember that a story is divided, in its simplest form, into five parts: exposition (also known as introduction), rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. Each of these five parts is vital to the story. It is almost impossible to find any kind of narrative which eschews one of them and doesn't leave the audience feeling unsatisfied.

This particular post, however, is about a specific one of those five parts: the exposition. Specifically, it's about how to provide your reader with the necessary exposition to allow them to get into the story without boring them.

So. Let's begin.

Sympathy and the Anti-Hero

Okay, people, now that I've been over the basics of how to characterize your cast, how to structure a narrative, and how to test to make sure that both of those are sound, it's time to get into the nitty-gritty of how to do this well.

You see, it doesn't matter if your main character is well-rounded and dynamic, or if your plot is well-structured and tight, if these things do not engage the audience. The point of any work of fiction is, after all, to entertain. That is, first and foremost, your goal. This is why I am a fan of OH GOD THE RAPTURE IS BURNING, despite the fact that there are several things that I don't like about it. It's not a perfect work of fiction. Far from it (and this isn't a slam against you, Jordan; none of us are good enough as writers, myself included, to create a perfect work). But it is consistently entertaining, because it doesn't take itself too seriously. Even at its lowest moments, you can usually get a laugh out of it. It's engaging. We want to know what happens next.

That's the key point, you see. You have to make the audience want to know what happens next. So this post is going to go over one of the most reliable ways to do that: constructing a sympathetic protagonist.




I'm sure that you've all read my Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides review (which was really more of a rant). It was, after all, only the very last post here. Anyway, you might remember that one of my chief complaints with the film was that Jack Sparrow is not a sympathetic or engaging protagonist. Not only is he a flat, static character, his motivation is to achieve something that the audience either doesn't care about or actively wants him to fail at. Jack Sparrow is not an effective protagonist. He does not engage the audience. He does not make you want to see what happens next.

Jack is, therefore, an example of a failed attempt at creating an anti-hero.

There are, you see, really only two types of heroes in fiction: the hero and the anti-hero. Most works of fiction have one of these as their protagonist. Those that don't are usually told from the point of view of a villain, but those are a separate style of work that I'll cover in a later post; this topic is more than varied enough without bringing villainous protagonists into the mix.

Your protagonist is obviously the most important character in your work, as I've talked about in earlier posts. It's important that the audience cares about them. The easiest way to do this is to make them into a hero or anti-hero, trying to do what's right. If someone is clearly fighting for good, then the audience has sympathy for them and some investment in what they're trying to do. Everybody likes to see justice done and the evil overlord defeated, followed by parades and medals.

But the choice between having a hero (also referred to as an ideal hero) protagonist and an anti-hero protagonist is an important one. Let me illustrate:

The Hero

The Anti-Hero

Superman is a paragon of justice, with an incorruptible sense of right and wrong and the power to enforce it. He has an unflinching ethical code, refusing to work outside the law and always doing his best to uphold it.

Batman, on the other hand, lacks Superman's powers. He's not a pushover, but he's not superhuman. Beyond that, he's not nice or sweet, and he works outside what the law would deem "justice", taking down criminals that the police refuse to attack.


It isn't just a matter of upholding the law versus circumventing it when necessary that decides whether or not a character is an anti-hero, however. There's more to it than that.

You see, in literature, the term "hero" is rather more rigidly defined than in popular usage. A hero is someone who is genuinely good and nice, incorruptible, always standing up for what's right, never using unnecessary force, defending the little man without any promise or expectation of reward or recognition, and so on. Beyond that, he has the power to do these things.

An "anti-hero" isn't just a darker and edgier hero. In literature, an anti-hero is anyone who lacks the attributes of a hero, and yet is still good. They may be ineffectual, play it fast and loose with their moral code, be less than kind to those they help, use a little bit more force than necessary (or even kill), going outside what many members of their society would consider legal, ethical, or maybe even moral, and so on. And yet, through all of this, they are still a good guy. They're still a hero. They're just not the archetypical hero.

For another example of an anti-hero, look at Frodo Baggins of The Lord of the Rings. Frodo is not a skilled fighter. He is not incorruptible. He doesn't know much about the world that he's venturing into. And yet he is, unquestionably, a good guy. He's kind, decent, and shouldering the burden of a quest that many would consider to be too great for him so that no one else has to suffer through it. He is an anti-hero, not because he's dark or edgy, but because he's human (well, hobbit). Almost every protagonist in modern fiction is an anti-hero, whether they are referred to as such in common discussion or not.

For another example of a "traditional" hero, look at Aragorn, from the same trilogy. Aragorn is upstanding, skilled, incorruptible, knowledgeable, and so on. He upholds the law - or, more accurately, fights with honor - in a situation that would be much easier for him if he didn't (for example, releasing the army of the dead from their bonds following the battle of Minas Tirith when he could really, really have used their help at the Black Gate, all because he promised). He is an archetypical hero.

Why did I give these two examples? Well, I think that it's important to illustrate that not all ideal heroes are invincible paragons of sweetness and light. Aragorn isn't mean, but he certainly isn't the nicest character in the series. It's also important to illustrate that anti-heroes aren't necessarily dark and edgy amoral sociopaths. Frodo is one of the kindest, most decent characters in the series.

The Fool Reviews Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

drink up, me hearties

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another installment of The Fool Reviews. Today, we're going to be looking at the latest installment in the well-known Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, On Stranger Tides.

Now, before we begin, I think it's important to establish that I am a big fan of the first three movies. I don't pretend that they're perfect. In fact, I consider both Dead Man's Chest and At World's End to be pretty damn terrible. But they're guilty pleasures to me, because, despite all the terribly confused mythology, awful pacing, groan-inducing attempts at humor, and the lackluster acting of Keira Knightley, there are good movies buried under there. They shine through in places, and I enjoy the hell out of those scenes. I can take the rest of the stupid for those few moments that match the sheer fun of the first film.

Which brings me to my next point. The highlight of all three of the first movies, in my opinion, was not Jack Sparrow. As the comic-relief-slash-deuteragonist of the first film, I found him engaging, but far from capable of carrying the movie on his own. No. To me, the greatest, most enduring character of the Pirates franchise is Captain Barbossa.

Look at this guy. This guy is fucking brilliant. This guy is pirate fiction incarnate. He's commanding. He's charismatic. He's an antagonist that never loses that threatening, menacing edge even when he undergoes a heel face turn. He's a magnificent bastard that basically carried the entire original trilogy. Geoffrey Rush is brilliant in this role. He's actually one of my favorite film characters of all time, and the ending of the second movie, when he comes walking out of the back of Tia Dalma's shack with his apple, had me grinning from ear to ear because I love this guy.

And yet, even though Rush is reprising his role in this movie, and Knightley has jumped ship, I did not have high hopes for On Stranger Tides. Rush is a great actor, and his character is a ton of fun to watch, but even he couldn't salvage the third installment. With the film under a new director and bringing in a mostly all-new cast, I couldn't see this being anything more than a train wreck, particularly given the setup it got at the end of the last movie.

And oh, boy, was I ever right. This is the only movie I have ever seen that actually competes with 2012 for the top spot on my personal "Most Hated Films" list. I despise this movie. 

So let's get this over with.

The Acid Test

So, since I've been going on about characterization and narrative structure for the last few posts, I figured it's time to tell you one of the most basic things that you can use to test your story to see if it meets all the requirements of having an actual narrative and characters, rather than a bunch of things that happen and props for them to happen to.

This is the acid test for writing.

It's very simple, really: remove something from your story. Does this substantially change the narrative? If so, then congratulations. That part of your story has passed the acid test. It is integral to the plot, and needs to be there.

The exact details of how to apply the acid test can vary, of course. When applying it to characters, you can just remove them from the story, but that will change how things go in most cases. That really only shows whether or not your character is a plot device. To tell whether or not your character is a character,  have them switch roles or dialogue with another character. Are they essentially interchangeable? Can you swap out dialogue between the two characters and not be able to tell the difference? Are the two characters able to fulfill the same roles in the story without any changes to their personalities? If they can, then they have failed the acid test. They're interchangeable and therefore not distinct characters.

When applying the acid test to events within the story, just remove the occurrence entirely. Do your characters get attacked by bandits? Have the bandit attack never occur. Does the story have to be changed substantially in order to accommodate this alteration? If not, then the event is unnecessary, and has failed the acid test.

This is, of course, just a rule of thumb. It is neither the best nor the most reliable way to test your story. For example, the acid test only really applies to the main cast, and only reliably so to rounded characters. Flat characters, due to their lack of depth, can fulfill almost any role easily and still have a point in the story. Certain characters might be designed to be simple plot devices. The fact that two characters are similar does not automatically mean that they're unnecessary to the story. And so on. Events within the story might not be strictly necessary to advance the plot, but might provide our characters with a little bit more development or the like.

Ultimately, only you can decide whether or not a character or event is necessary for your story. The acid test is only meant to give you a rule-of-thumb means of judging things offhand. It's a tool, to be used as needed and discarded when not.

The Basics of Characterization

Since I've been going over the basics of narrative structure and writing techniques for the past few posts, I figured it's about time that I get to one of the more difficult parts of writing a story: turning your characters from names and appearances into actual characters.

Firstly, let's look at the different types of characters. No, I don't mean antagonists and protagonists. I mean static characters, dynamic characters, flat characters, and rounded characters.

Static characters are characters that remain the same over the course of a story. Dynamic characters are the opposite: characters that change over the course of a story. This doesn't necessarily mean physical changes, such as growing older. Those are some of the most superficial changes that a character can go through, really. Rather, it most often refers to emotional and personal changes.

Flat characters are characters with only one or two defining traits. They are, for all intents and purposes, cardboard cutouts. Or, going back to my first post, they're mannequins with names painted on them. Rounded characters are characters with depth and personality to them, with complex motivations and more to them than a few simple traits.

Now, here's the most important thing to understand: none of these character types are bad. It's incredibly difficult, in fact, to find any work of fiction that doesn't include at least one example of each. Just because static characters don't change doesn't mean that they don't have a purpose. Just because flat characters have little in the way of personality doesn't mean that they can't be useful. You just have to keep in mind that each type of character has a specific role in the story.

Let's look at an example story to get an idea.

Since I've already used Terry Pratchett's novel Guards! Guards! as an example in a previous post, let's go back to that. For those of you who don't know, Guards! Guards! is a fantasy-satire novel about the Night Watch of a fantasy city named Ankh-Morpork. The Night Watch is made up of the city's absolute bottom-of-the-barrel worst. They're not criminals. They're just considered utterly worthless by society. During the time of the story, the Night Watch has dwindled to four members. These are:

• Captain Sam Vimes, the story's protagonist, a dynamic, rounded character
• Lance-Constable Carrot Ironfoundersson, the story's deuteragonist, a flat, dynamic character
• Sergeant Fred Colon, a flat, static character
• Corporal Nobby Nobbs, a flat, static character

Let's break down how each of the character attribute combinations works here.

Vimes is the story's protagonist. He is the most important character, and thus the one that the audience will be spending the most time watching. As such, it's important that he be interesting to read about, and that he isn't a paper-thin caricature that the reader can't take seriously. Being a dynamic character makes him more interesting to read about, since we want to know how he's going to end up. He goes from being a bitter, cynical alcoholic who just wants to be ignored to... a bitter, cynical alcoholic who has decided that upholding the law is the most important thing in his life. He's also a rounded character. He isn't just shown to be bitter and cynical for no reason. We see why he's so jaded and miserable: he was once a wide-eyed idealist who had his dreams of being a well-respected upholder of the right crushed by the realities of life in a city as rife with corruption as Ankh-Morpork, but he retains his moral compass despite everything and does his best to do the right thing.

Carrot is an interesting case. He begins the story as a flat character, being the wide-eyed idealist whose only real purpose is to uphold the law despite everything and thus reawaken Vimes' idealistic side. However, he is also dynamic. He grows over the course of the story - and the series as a whole - becoming less of the naïve idiot and more of a charismatic paragon who knows full well that people are jerks, but chooses to give them all the benefit of the doubt anyway. As such, his dynamic side eventually turns him into a rounded character. This suits his role as deuteragonist perfectly. As the second most important character in the story, it isn't necessary for him to be as fleshed-out as Vimes, but he does get a good deal of character development as things go on.

Colon and Nobby are the simplest out of the four main characters to analyze. They're a flat, static characters. They have a handful of defining characteristics which give them their role in the plot, and they never step outside them (in this book, at least). And, as they are largely present to provide comic relief, this suits their roles perfectly.

So, to get a look at the final type of character, let's look at another cast member: Lord Havelock Vetinari, Patrician and semi-benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morkpork. Vetinari is a rounded, static character. He has complex motivations, desires, and many hidden depths, but his character is largely set and unchanging throughout the series. This suits his role in the series perfectly as well. Vetinari is an ever-present force in the series, and interacts with a great many characters. As such, he has to be complex and believable. But he isn't a main character himself, and his main motivation - to keep Ankh-Morpork running as smoothly as possible - is constant and logical. He has the ability to achieve that objective without any kind of substantial alteration to his personality or methods, so he doesn't need any character changes in order to make him work. 

You might still be wondering why anyone would ever use static, flat characters. They are, after all, by definition, flat, and never going to get rounded out, so why would you put them in your story when they're just going to get ridiculed for being shallow? Why not make all of your characters as deep and complex as possible, and show how they all grow as a. result of the events of the story?

Simple. The law of conservation of detail.

It's an easy principle that every writer should familiarize themselves with. Your readers don't have an infinite ability to absorb information, and you don't have infinite time in which to give them that information. There's only so much that they can absorb, and only so much that you can put out. As such, any detail which you give in regards to the story, whether regarding a character's personality or anything else, should be important to the story. 

You might argue that it's best to put as many details into the work as possible regardless, because this will help to bring the world of the story to life. Well, you're wrong.

That's pretty much all there is to it. Too many details can drown a work of fiction in a mire of pointless exposition. No one cares about the diner waitress' long and tragic backstory full of crushed dreams and broken lives when her only purpose in the story is to take the main characters' orders and deliver them coffee. Telling the readers too much about her takes time away from what you should be focusing on.

Besides that, certain character types stop working if you try to explore them too deeply. The comedic sociopath archetype, for example (Belkar from The Order of the Stick leaps to mind), stops being funny if you give the sociopath in question an in-depth backstory explaining how their abusive childhood led to their perpetuating the cycle in the present day. 

Look at your characters and determine the absolute bare minimum of personality and development that they require to function within the story. Generally, your protagonist should be both rounded and dynamic, since the story will be focusing most on them and their personal journey, and flat, static characters are useful as bit players and supporting cast (but not as the protagonist, deuteragonist, or antagonist, as those characters usually require more depth), but other than that, things are wide open. It's up to you to determine what character traits to use depending on what type of story you want to tell. 

Once you've determined what type of character you're creating, though, it's important that you go about creating them in the right way. Many works of fiction, not just blogs, begin by having their main character talk about things that they like: their favorite color, what type of music they listen to, what clothes they wear, what they look like, et cetera.

DO NOT DO THIS.

This is one of the most common mistakes that writers make, and one of those most perpetuated by those who try to teach the craft. It is extraordinarily bad characterization technique, and yet many works that purport to tell you how to create intriguing and engaging characters will tell you to begin by deciding on these basic characteristics. 

But these characteristics aren't actually important to who the character is. They don't tell us anything about their personality, really. It's just data. People consider things like this to be central to a character, but in reality, these are some of the most superficial aspects of your character's personality. And, again, this falls into the trap of violating conservation of detail. How much of this information is actually relevant to the story? Anything that you write that is not relevant to the story is boring. Reading about people describing their favorite band, color, food, and the like is boring. Mind-numbingly so. It's made all the more so because the reader knows this is pointless. Yes, in real life, people will post this kind of stuff on their blogs, but this is not real life. You do not have to start out by painting your main character as a boring, mind-numbingly uninteresting fan of music genre X.

These things are much less important than your character's defining personality traits. Are they kind? Bitter? Arrogant? Humble? Idealistic? Cynical? A hero? A coward? Those are the most important things about your character. Those are the things we want to know about them. Those are the things you should be telling us - but not in that way.

If at all possible, avoid any type of expository dump at all. This is another key point of storytelling: show, don't tell. Show us who your character is by having them do things. Have them react to situations rather than just telling us what they would do if something interesting happened.

Going back to the Guards! Guards! example, when Vimes is characterized, we don't get any kind of opening exposition dump regarding his character. Instead, we see it. He's blind stinking drunk in an alley, narrating to himself in crime-noir fashion about how the city is a woman: you love her, but she kicks you in the teeth, but you come back anyway, because she's all yours, all you have, even in her gutters...

Then, when it comes time for Vimes to reveal his true moral beliefs, we don't get told that he's made a decision to stand up against the corrupt officials. We see him doing so, pushing hard to get people to accept that the dragon is still alive to the point of losing his badge - and then carrying on regardless, upholding the law because he was always an officer of the law, and not the city.

Rather than telling us what your character is like, show us. Have things happen to them so that we can see how they react. That tells us more about the character than a week's worth of pointless posts regarding food and pets can ever do, and in a much more interesting fashion. It both tells us about the character and keeps the plot going so that people don't get bored.

Remember: it is always better to show us something about your character than to tell us about it.

On Narrative Structure

This is something that I've been thinking about for a while, and I think that it's important to say, particularly with regards to my audience who write blogs for the Fear mythos. In a blog, it is important to have a story.

This isn't meant to condescend to anyone, or to insult people for blogs that they've written. It's not to say that people don't understand the basics of this stuff already, because I'm sure that most of you do. But I'm going to start from the beginning so that you can follow my logic step-by-step and really understand what I'm trying to say.

So. Let's begin.

The Fool Reviews Pontypool

shut up or die

Hello, everyone ("everyone" meaning "those one or two people who actually give a crap what I post here"), and welcome to our very first installment of The Fool Reviews. 

In my previous post, you may have noticed that I generally prefer older horror movies to the new ones. My favorites are Halloween, The Thing, Night of the Living Dead, and The Exorcist - which shouldn't really surprise anyone, since they're all well-known masterpieces of the genre. However, there is another entry on my list of favorites which is rather more modern, and since MesserTod asked, via comments, about what modern horror movies I like, I thought I'd go ahead and show it to you.

This is Pontypool, a 2008 low-budget horror film which doesn't get nearly enough love. 

Before I begin, though, I think it's worth mentioning that this movie is actually on my top-ten list of all-time favorites, and I think that you'd be best off watching it for yourself to see why. It's by no means one of the best films I've seen, but it's definitely one of those that I most enjoy watching. Be forewarned that this review does contain spoilers, and that you'll lose a lot of the initial impact of watching it for yourself if you read this first. 

If you're interested in seeing the movie for yourself, the entire thing is available on YouTube in six parts. It has a total running time of about an hour and a half, so if you've got some free time, I highly recommend that you check it out for yourself. The first of the six parts can be found here.

From here on in, I'm going to assume that you've either scene the movie for yourself or don't mind spoilers, all right? Good. Now, on to the review.

Pontypool's opening is actually one of the best that I've ever seen, and is definitely one of the strong points of the movie. The film stars Stephen McHattie as Grant Mazzy, a radio DJ in the small Canadian city of Pontypool. McHattie's voice has been described by multiple people, myself included, as "orgasmic", "the best sex your ears will ever have", and "audible chocolate". Really. I would go gay for this voice. I'm not entirely sure that listening to him talk doesn't already count as having sex with him, and I'm even less sure that I care.

Anyway. The film opens with McHattie providing an extremely strange and surreal narration, which begins as him expositing about a missing cat named Honey:

Mrs. French's cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town. "Have you seen Honey?" We've all seen the posters, but nobody has seen Honey the cat. Nobody. Until last Thursday morning, when Miss Collette Piscine swerved her car to miss Honey the cat as she drove across a bridge. Well this bridge, now slightly damaged, is a bit of a local treasure and even has its own fancy name; Pont de Flaque. Now Collette, that sounds like Culotte. That's Panty in French. And Piscine means Pool. Panty pool. Flaque also means pool in French, so Collette Piscine, in French Panty Pool, drives over the Pont de Flaque, the Pont de Pool if you will, to avoid hitting Mrs. French's cat that has been missing in Pontypool. Pontypool. Pontypool. Panty pool. Pont de Flaque. What does it mean? Well, Norman Mailer, he had an interesting theory that he used to explain the strange coincidences in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. In the wake of huge events, after them and before them, physical details they spasm for a moment; they sort of unlock and when they come back into focus they suddenly coincide in a weird way. Street names and birth dates and middle names, all kind of superfluous things appear related to each other. It's a ripple effect. So, what does it mean? Well... it means something's going to happen. Something big. But then, something's always about to happen. 

And this narration is accompanied by nothing but simple audio line.

As I said above, I consider this to be one of the best openings in cinema history. McHattie provides what might otherwise be an extremely boring and pointless narration with so much mood and atmosphere so easily that it draws you in and makes you want to know more. The narration's surreal tone and strange topic matter create an atmosphere of mystery and madness, foreshadowing the strange wordplay that will provide the film with so much of its mood later. And, to top it all off, the lack of visuals establishes firmly for the audience the fact that sound and words, along with their meanings and repetition, will be much more important to this movie than the visuals. This is something that isn't done often in movies, and is even less commonly done well.

The movie then fades in to our first view of Grant Mazzy, driving in to work early in the morning during a heavy snowstorm. Mazzy has an argument with his agent over the phone which is entirely irrelevant to the plot, but the movie knows this, and only uses it as a setup to our first creepy moment: while stopped at a light, Mazzy is startled by the sudden appearance of a woman, dressed in oddly light clothing for a snowstorm, appears outside his passenger-side window. She says something to him, but the window is in the way, and the audience can't make it out. Mazzy rolls down the window to talk to her, but the strange woman is already backing away into the snowstorm, fading from view, and when Mazzy calls out "Who are you?", the only response is the woman shouting the same question back at him.

This is a really creepy scene. It establishes that something weird is going on, and reinforces the theme that words and repetition are important to this film. It also isn't so creepy as to qualify as a scare itself. Rather, the film uses it as a means to establish mood and atmosphere, making later scares more powerful. It's simple and well-executed, avoiding either extreme of trying to terrify the audience from the beginning (which rarely works, as the audience hasn't had time to get adjusted to the mood of the film and so such scares can only really be jumps) and attempting pointless build-up with no substance and no creepy events whatsoever (which leaves the audience bored).

From there, we move to Grant starting his work day, and the movie does a remarkably good job of setting up the characters with comparatively little dialogue. Mazzy is essentially the radio community's version of the cowboy cop, dedicated to "full disclosure, no matter the consequences." His boss, Sidney Briar, is the beleaguered chief of police, and Laurel-Ann Drummond is their bright and bubbly ex-military intern. Despite the fact that I've just summed up the characters into those three short phrases, they don't feel like cutouts or cliches, as the movie does a remarkably good job of showing their personalities, establishing that they're all good people in their own ways, and showing us that, while they might clash with one another occasionally, they genuinely are friends. And it doesn't hurt that the performances that McHattie and his supporting cast turn in are absolutely top-notch.


We're also introduced to our fourth character of the movie: Ken Loney, the faceless weatherman of the station who communicates with the rest of the crew via phone, because he's nominally in his "Sunshine Chopper" - actually his car parked on top of a hill due to the station's low budget. Loney's character is another pleasant surprise in this movie. It takes talent to pull off a character without having the actor ever actually appear on-screen in any way, shape, or form, and yet Pontypool gets you invested in this character as well. Granted, it's not to the extent of the main trio, and you never really get to care about him the same way you do the rest, but he's a character, not just a cutout.


We also get a couple of bits of information which, at first, seem like throwaway pieces of the movie. If you watch carefully, though, you can see their significance. Nothing in this movie is wasted. One, the movie takes place on Valentine's Day; two, there is a copy of Neal Stephenson's science-fiction novel Snow Crash on one of the desks in the radio station. Snow Crash's presence is a nice little bit of foreshadowing for those who have read the book, while the Valentine's Day date  has later significance. I'll explain that when we get to it.


We then get our next bit of plot: Ken Loney calls in for a second time, not to report on a change in the weather, but to let the rest of the crew know of a breaking news story: a mob has gathered around the offices of Doctor John Mendez, who is under investigation for writing unnecessary prescriptions. As Ken reports on the situation, he begins to panic as the building "explodes outward", with people tearing through the walls inside and trampling one another. Military vehicles and helicopters arrive on the scene, and dozens of people are trampled to death just before they lose Ken's signal.


And this establishes another critical point about this movie: Pontypool knows how to avoid opening The Door.


The majority of the creepy scenes in this movie are audio-only. Mazzy and the rest of the cast never leave the radio station. Instead, we hear reports of what's happening outside, and the lack of accompanying visuals allows us to substitute our own fears in place of the limited visuals that the crew would have been able to produce with such a small budget. This actually helps the film greatly, keeping it as a horror film, rich with atmosphere, rather than being a simple action movie.


Mazzy's report on the incident is, however, interrupted when a group of singers arrives for a pre-scheduled radio performance of one of the songs from a musical adaptation of Lawrence of Arabia. This might be interpreted as padding, except that it gives us another creepy moment at the end: the youngest of the girl singers, after the song is concluded, begins to speak:

I can't remember how it ends. It just keeps starting over and over. And over and over. And over and over. And it's not called "The Lawrence and the Table" and it's - not anymore. No. No. Prah. Prah. Prah. Prah. Prah. Prah...

Again, like the beginning of the movie, this is an incredibly creepy scene. It's even creepier because we've seen this girl over the past few minutes, and a few seconds ago, she was completely normal. It reinforces the themes of repetition and nonsensical phrases, and, because it was placed at the end of such a deliberately innocuous scene, it's extremely jarring and unsettling. Also like the beginning of the movie, it serves to frighten the audience without being so much of a change that it serves as a climax to the buildup of tension that's been happening so far. Rather, it both frightens and increases the already-intense atmosphere of the film.

Allow me to take a moment here to talk a little bit more about horror as a genre. We all know that the whole point of horror is to frighten, but there's more than one way to do that. Broadly speaking, though, there are two main ways to scare the audience: you can build atmosphere, or you can go for the payoff. Think of atmosphere as a resource which the horror writer can create and store. As long as he stores that atmosphere, it will drain away slowly, but as long as there's any left the audience will continue to be creeped out. The more you have in storage, the creepier your movie is. The "payoff" can, to use an extremely crude analogy, be thought of as the money shot. The more atmosphere you have, the more oomph your payoff will have, but it will completely empty your stores - and you have to be careful that your payoff is awesome enough to channel your entire store of atmosphere, or you've just wasted all that you had built up but couldn't use. If you haven't built up any atmosphere whatsoever, going for a payoff scare will have no effect on the audience. If you do it right, such as in the titular thing's reveal in The Thing, it can be incredibly, explosively terrifying, but it's a high-risk, high-reward type deal, and it's entirely possible to terrify your audience without doing it at all. Too many horror movies rely entirely on attempted payoff scares, not realizing that they're entirely pointless without the requisite buildup. Even fewer movies realize that you can actually make an entire movie absolutely terrifying without the use of any payoff scares whatsoever - but that's getting too far off track here.

The scares that we've seen so far in Pontypool - the woman in the blizzard, the phone call from Ken Loney, and the repetition from the little girl - have all been dedicated to building up the atmosphere of the film. Because none of them have been payoffs, the movie just continues to get more and more heavily atmospheric, and therefore creepier. The film is building up its levels of scary, and in an extremely well-executed fashion. The audience is unsettled and creeped out from just those three scenes.

I think it's also worth noting here that the film's soundtrack is excellent. It's rather like the Joker's theme from The Dark Knight, or the main theme to The Thing: extremely understated and rarely noticed, never in the foreground of things, but always building at exactly the right pace and hitting the precise pitch which will serve to emphasize what's happening while keeping the audience, in most cases, from even being consciously aware of its existence. This is something that a lot of horror films lack. The right score used in the right way can help to make a scary moment that much scarier.

Other callers begin to try and reach the station with reports of more unsettling incidents, but they all get cut off before Laurel-Ann can transfer them to Mazzy. Then Ken Loney calls a third time, claiming to have seen people walking the streets imitating the sounds of windshield wipers and chanting "Watch out for U-boats!" ad infinitum. Again, we don't get to see any of this, which only serves to make it all the creepier, particularly when Ken witnesses a horde of these people attacking a van, pulling the passengers out, and ripping them open in an attempt to climb inside them. Then one of the crazed mob members attacks Ken, only to break its own limbs and become unable to move. It lies there, whispering something, but before Ken can get close enough to make out what it's saying, the signal is interrupted by a broadcast made in French. The translation which Mazzy makes is, in my opinion, one of the greatest "oh, crap" moments ever:

For your safety, please avoid contact with close family members and refrain from the following: all terms of endearment, such as "Honey", baby talk with young children, and rhetorical discourse. For greater safety, please avoid the English language. Do not translate this message.

I mean, really. That's chilling. That's mysterious. That's suspenseful. That's ominous. And, to top it all off, it's followed immediately by Ken Loney calling in again to reveal what the whispering man was saying: "Mommy", over and over, in the voice of a baby.


Really, this is one of the creepiest scenes in all of cinema history. It's absolutely pants-wettingly terrifying. Even Mazzy freaks out to the point where he attempts to force the others to leave the station, only to be forced back inside when a horde of people - all chanting various things which the radio crew said on-air earlier that day - attack them. Laurel-Ann's military instincts save the day, allowing her to recognize the danger fast enough to shut the door and keep them out. 


And then she starts to begin repeating variations on the phrase "Mister Mazzy is missing".


Now, this is where I finally have to stop giving this movie nothing but praise. Pontypool is an excellent horror movie, and well worth the price of admission, but it does have two failings, both of which surface here. Following her repetition of that phrase, Laurel-Ann begins imitating the sound of a tea kettle. This is an incredibly unsettling scene until one of the windows of the radio station opens up from the outside, admitting a fat man in a suit. This man is revealed to be Doctor John Mendez. 


Mendez is one of the film's two weak points. He isn't bad. Far from it, in fact; he's an incredibly interesting character, because you know he's wrapped up in this and he knows more than the rest. But he is jarring. Mendez, you see, is presented as a funny foreign man, almost manic in his actions no matter how dark the situation gets. He never seems to really think that there's any danger. He's just interested. He's very creepy in his own way, but he does seem slightly out-of-place in this movie, particularly in those parts when he's acting as a sort of pseudo-comic relief.


Anyway, back to the movie. Mendez drags Sidney into the soundproof broadcasting booth, declaring it to be a "lifeboat", and locks the infected Laurel-Ann outside. He claims that she can't know where they are if she can't hear them, so the soundproof booth is their best defense. Laurel-Ann knows about the soundproof booth, though, and so begins throwing herself repeatedly against the glass. This is also a very well-done and disturbing scene.


Then we get to the film's biggest weak point: Mendez's explanation of what is happening. If you're familiar with Snow Crash, you've very likely guessed it by now: the "virus" isn't a virus at all, but an infectious meme. Certain words in the English language are "infected" - and it's not always the same word - and catch on the victims' brains when they understand them, turning them into replicators for the "signal". The victims are driven by a need to find someone else to "suicide into", to force into accepting the virus. 


Now, don't get me wrong. This is an idea that, even though it was inspired by Neal Stephenson's novel, has very, very rarely been done in fiction, and certainly never in this way. But it's still extremely outlandish, and requires a lot more suspension of disbelief than the rest of the movie has thus far. I will give it credit in that the explanation still leaves The Door closed far enough that the infection is still genuinely threatening, even though it is something of a jarring explanation just because it hasn't ever been done before. It's not bad, if you don't mind a little strangeness in your fiction (and I certainly don't), but it does stand a chance of shaking you out of your immersion if you aren't willing to stretch quite that far.


Ken Loney calls in one final time in an extremely creepy scene which reveals that he has also succumbed to the infection, and Laurel-Ann dies horribly, vomiting her innards up all over the glass of the booth in the film's only visual scare. It's well-executed and disturbing, and serves as a solid payoff to the buildup thus far. Unfortunately, Laurel-Ann's final demise doesn't mean that our three survivors are safe; the infected have found their way inside the radio station, and are crowding around the booth, trying to smash the glass. 


Mazzy, Sidney, and Mendez use the station's exterior loudspeakers to broadcast the message "Sidney Briar is alive" to the crowds, luring them out of the building and simultaneously sending a signal to Sidney's children, living several miles away in another city, that she hasn't succumbed yet. Unfortunately, just as Mazzy and Sidney begin to relax again, Mendez begins to repeat the word "breathe" to himself and babbles in another language. Mazzy and Sidney abandon him in the booth, despite his protestations and cries of "It's only the English language that's infected", in order to find somewhere safer to hide. 


And, while they're moving quietly through the station, we get yet another perfectly-executed scare: the singing girl from the beginning of the movie is lurking behind a desk, and attacks Sidney, echoing her screams of "Grant, run! Run now!" It's incredibly frightening, especially given the gore-discretion shot which comes into play when Mazzy and Sidney kill the girl. 


And then yet another thing goes wrong: the power flickers, causing the stereo system of the radio station to turn on and re-attracting the infected. Mendez runs out of the booth and sacrifices himself to buy Sidney and Mazzy time to hide themselves, proving that he was right in saying that only the English language is infected; he wasn't succumbing to the infection, but trying to avoid its effects entirely.


Mazzy and Sidney lock themselves in a supply closet, but Sidney begins to exhibit symptoms, repeating the word "kill". Mazzy, desperate, begins trying to counteract the effects of the infectious word by forcing her brain to reject its meaning. He finally succeeds through repetition of the phrase "kill is kiss", and Sidney is cured. Mazzy immediately seizes upon the idea that they can cure the rest of the infectees through a similar method using the station's broadcasting equipment, and the two of them return to the booth to make their last, desperate gamble to save Pontypool. 


Outside, military forces have begun slaughtering the citizens of the city in an effort to contain their spread. Mazzy and Sidney begin utilizing free-association techniques in an effort to confuse the infectees, forcing their brains to reject the understanding of the words which have taken them over. Outside, military officials use loudspeakers to scream, in French, that Sidney has to stop Mazzy from broadcasting, as he is infected. But the two of them both refuse to end their broadcast. When it becomes apparent that the military is killing people faster than Mazzy can hope to cure them, if he's having any effect at all, he shouts for everyone to stop -


 - and they do. An eerie silence descends over Pontypool, and Mazzy makes his final speech, which forever establishes him as the single most badass radio announcer in history. Unfortunately, it isn't enough to convince the military to withdraw. They haven't stopped killing people - they've just been withdrawing troops in preparations to carpet-bomb the area. The film ends with a French countdown, with Mazzy and Sidney kissing as it reaches zero.

Horror and Characterization

So, since I'm apparently awake and not falling asleep any time soon, a few thoughts on horror literature again.

Let me get one thing set out there first: I like EAT. EAT is one of the Fears that I consider most interesting, and I'll explain why later in this post.

Now, that said, I don't think EAT is as scary as the rest of them.

Some of you might be wondering why. After all, EAT absorbs you into a hive mind and replaces all the water in your body with itself, turning you into an only-partially-human abomination whose personality has been obliterated and subsumed by The Camper. That's pretty terrifying, right?

Well, no. I don't think so. EAT is, essentially, the Borg. It assimilates you. And the Borg, while awesome, are not particularly scary. They're intimidating, yes, but there's a big difference between being intimidated and being terrified. EAT also runs on paranoia fuel, since, conceivably, any drop of water could be the one that turns you into a zombie, but still, I don't find that to be terrifying. Would it be absolutely nightmarish to be in a world where EAT exists? Oh yes, the same way that it would suck to be in a world where the Borg were actually flying around space in those giant cubes.

But I don't find it particularly nightmare-fuel-y when placed next to the rest of the Fears. Why? Well, because EAT opens the door.

Like I explained in my last post, "opening the door" means "revealing too much information to retain the aura of sinister mystery which enables the audience to fill in the gaps with their own fears". EAT opens the door. It infects you when you drink part of its "ichor". Once you're infected, you become obsessed with something; if that obsession isn't enough to keep you away from the ichor, you drown yourself and become part of The Camper. Even the process of creation and development for The Camper is fully explained. This really leaves only one question for the audience to answer in the privacy of their own heads: "what does EAT's 'true form' look like?" And there's really only so much terror the answer to that can produce, even given Lovecraftian levels of atmosphere.

Beyond that, EAT is a character. EAT has a personality, concrete goals and desires, and, most importantly, a voice. It's possible for a character that speaks to be frightening, of course, but it's always going to be a very different kind of fright than that engendered by a silent antagonist. Going back to the Borg analogy here, in Star Trek: First Contact, the crew of the Enterprise is attacked by a Borg cube. But this Borg cube has something else with it: the Borg Queen.

Until this point, the Borg (except Picard, when he was temporarily assimilated) have been largely voiceless, emotionless, and entirely lacking in personality. They're nothing more than mindless assimilators. They're intimidating because they can't be reasoned with, they can't be bargained with, and they're nearly impossible to stop. Once the Borg Queen shows up, the Borg have a voice and a personality behind them. They weren't particularly scary to begin with, but once the Borg Queen shows up, they're no longer scary at all. They're still intimidating, yeah, but they're not frightening.

Why? Because the Borg Queen is not a monster. The Borg Queen has a face, a personality, a voice. The Borg Queen has an identity. The door is fully open for the Borg Queen. Contrast this with Michael Myers. We know almost nothing about Michael. Therefore, he is frightening.

That's what EAT is. EAT is the Borg Queen. EAT has a personality. Thus, EAT is not as frightening as the other Fears.

You might recall, though, that I said at the beginning of this post that I like EAT. Why, if I don't think it's particularly frightening? Simple. That's not EAT's role in the story. That's not what EAT is meant to do.

Because EAT has a personality, we can do things with EAT that we can't do with any other Fear. EAT has an agenda, and it's been known to work with humans to achieve its ends. That's something no other Fear really does. The Blind Man does it in some adaptations, but not as often, and rarely does it work with actual protagonists (as opposed to the cult which comprises The Archive).

So no. EAT is not particularly frightening. But it is extremely useful, and that's something that shouldn't be overlooked. Because EAT exists, the mythos is open to a lot of stories that wouldn't otherwise be possible. That's why I like EAT. When it comes to scares, I'll look elsewhere. But EAT can fill roles in the story that nothing else can, and that is a priceless tool.