i get the feeling that Honey the cat was the original source of the infection, or at the very least, her name was. as "Honey" is the cat's name, but is also a source of endearment liked Sweetie and Darling.
Having actual family from Pontypool I can confirm that conversations with them will bore you to death. Whether or not you turn into zombies is another thing entirely.
I know you're always debating between having movie summaries or not doing them... but I really do hope you always keep them. It's enjoyable hearing your summary of the movies and your snarky comments for dumb scenes.
Yeah, i see why some wants the summaries gone, but to me they are the best part and does sorta help sorta keep lonelyness at bay when sitting around a friday evening with a case of the flu
The ending post credit scene is metaphorical. The pair have started using semiotic roleplaying to avoid language confirmation. Essentially cutting themselves off by creating a false reality around themselves. In this case making a Tarantino-esque neonoir. Some evidence for this is the snow falling outside linking their real surroundings, the allegorical conversation outlining their plan to leave and Grant telling Syndey not to call him baby an attempt to avoid terms of endearment.
I think the most horrifying part of this movie is that the directors explained that the conversationalists, when they get a hold of someone, literally rip open the other person's mouth and try to climb inside of their mouth.
My grandmother had a brain tumor that extremely degraded her understanding of verbal communication. Both in and out… Your science breakdown made me break down in tears I miss her so much
Idk why people want to spread the disease, but one thing that popped into my head was this: The people infected seemed obviously scared and distressed as well as confused and alone. It’s clear the infected can’t rly understand each other either. And what do humans do when they know they’re sick and need help? They seek out other humans to help them who are healthy. Idk, just thoughts
I don’t think it’s just the thought of I Need help but other thoughts as well. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Anne say she was going to look for someone before she completely lost it
And, when your brain does glitch and you just can’t say something correctly you keep trying. If it goes on long enough, or the other person just isn’t understanding some level of desperation will kick in just from the panic of suddenly being un-understandable
i've always wondered what would happen if there could be a disease spread simply by sensing it or knowing that it's there. like, you get some advanced form of pneumonia by seeing a certain shape, your fingers and toes die if you hear a funky noise. this whole movie kept reminding me of the memetic scps from the scp fandom, which can affect you if you just know about them
Yeah I immediately thought of some of the SCP memetics. This movie is basically showing the outbreak of an SCP memetic on the ground level instead of reading about it in a file after the fact, thus forcing you to come to your own conclusions instead of having the effect explained to you.
In the novel, the infected would bite into each others' mouths and twist their heads in a way to break each others' necks. It always gave me the impression that they were trying to force their trigger word into the other person directly by mouth to mouth. Of course my interpretation may not be correct because Pontypool Changes Everything is nearly incomprehensible in a way that I assume is by design. I think the reason why the Conversationalists repeat words to try to divorce them from their meaning is because repeating words or phrases can sometimes cause the words to lose their shape. Like the mouth and tongue can't keep making the movements they need to in order to say the words. So maybe the immune response is that the people are trying to lose the shape of the words and thus their meaning as well. It's really cool seeing the Conversationalist disease analyzed from a biological perspective. Pontypool is one of my favorite horror movies just because of the creeping dread that comes from knowing something is happening but not having enough information. And that every new piece of information you get both makes the problem make less sense and yet increases the sense of danger that is coming. So I'm really happy to see people reviewing it!
so you mean.. like a tongue twister where when you say it repeatedly and too fast it becomes something else that's hilarious? Now I want to see a Doctor Who episode about this.... Hey, does the killer dust mites that repeat the last word their most recent victim said count? nah.. so okay doctor who didn't do this yet.
This is a COGNITO hazard. If you remember the story of the tower of Babel. The same thing. Comprehension, even on a intrinsically minute level is enough to spread the disease. The same way we rewire our brain to learn a new language, or martial arts you fundamentally have changed how you will forever think. Everything will change right down to comprehension of words, sleep, and eating patterns. It's quite scary when you wrap your head around this.
@@OmarrMcinnis Babel seems an ill-fitting example. Roko’s Basilisk seems more apt, because just being exposed to the words/idea is enough to theoretically doom you.
I gotta say, I went and watched this one right after watching this video because of an all-consuming curiosity to hear what their gibberish sounded like. Words cannot describe my horror upon hearing that the infected in the early stages (especially Laurel-Ann's experience) sound exactly how I sound on very rare occasions when I suspect I am having a focal seizure or some sort of intense migraine attack. Along with the extreme sense of deja-vu, I have spoken gibberish like that in the past, was fully aware that I wasn't making sense, and devolved into not being able to detatch the tip of my tongue from just behind my upper teeth. There's just something about a horror flick that perfectly mimicks one of your own scary experiences that makes it 10x scarier lol
I'm gonna sound like a dweeb but this happened like 14 years ago when I was in highschool. I smoked pot the first couple times and I gOT NO chill introduction, like heavy good stuff and bong after bong. The state it put me in the first two times convinced I was in a dream. My perception of time changed, and no hallucinations but I had the visual and audio stimulation that can make even normal dreams feel off and obscure. The panic attack I git when I was convinced I was dreaming and it wouldn't end made me feel like I was in a true horror hell. What was only two hours felt like 10.
@@ericgunner4121 Yeah, pot is so normalized (even _then_ it was normalized, let alone _now_ ) that a lot of people are unprepared for the fact that the way it upsets your normal thinking processes can actually be quite distressing. This and the fact that it just seems to have an intrinsic ability to cause a state of panic in some users means that the drug really ought to be accorded more respect. Tbh, assuming that they, themselves, were more knowledgeable than you, it sounds like your friends - if indeed they _were_ friends - did you a disservice by not warning you that you may not feel fully in control of your thoughts, and that as a novice user it might be wise to be conservative with your intake; or not reassuring you that the over~thinking, looping or intrusive thoughts that you may be undergoing are normal and temporary, and that people have ingested _enormous_ amounts of dope without any lasting ill~effects. Notwithstanding such reassurances, the development of weird, genetically modified, mutant strains of weed containing unnatural levels of THC, and in particular the emergence of edibles with little or no regulation or oversight regarding strength does concern me. Ingesting your cannabinoids orally there is a time lag - or time _bomb(!)_ effect that one doesn't get smoking, vaping, etc. Also, at least with regard to natural(ish!) weed, there is _some_ kind of a limit to just how much one _can_ smoke, and how much THC they can thereby ingest, especially when taken with the 'feedback' in more~or~less real time one gets with that route. I think the most concerning thing, _two_ things, really, about edibles is that they almost always come in a form that would be particularly attractive to children, eg chocolate bars, brownies, etc; this in itself need not _necessarily_ be a problem, were it not for the fact that irresponsible manufacturers use lurid, eye catching packaging and often feature well known cartoon characters, a combination that might almost be _designed_ to attract children, as flies to jam! Luckily novice users of cannabis, and children, do often seem to have a marked resilience to its effects, but your _own_ experience and the fact that there seems to be a rash of children being brought to A&E Depts. suffering the after effects of accidentally ingested dope 'confections' (and doubtless these kids are just the tip of the iceberg) show that this can't be counted upon. The fact that anyone even _would_ is itself staggering, but in this you are probably talking about the kind of gobdaws that find it hilarious to give their pets blowbacks. My late wife as a child experienced the after~effects of accidentally ingesting dope when as a child of maybe 4 or 5 she used her sister's hash oil as perfume (I must say, in fairness, I'm talking about events that happened in the '70's to a child, recollected decades later as an adult, by a woman who can no longer be 'cross~examined', so it's not like the circumstances and events are entirely cut~and~dried... _but!_ ) even only ingesting the cannabinoids via her skin she would nevertheless hallucinate an encounter with a 'Hat Man' like figure that would haunt her (metaphorically anyway) for the rest of her life! Finally, I should probably say, my comments here relate only to 'natural' (albeit possibly 'mutant') weed. Despite some of the more hysterical coverage one encounters about them, I think it's possible that artificial cannabinoids might have a valuable role, both recreationally and medically. Hell, despite causing havoc in the streets, even the 'super~opiate' Fentanyl has a very important role in the operating theatre! _Nevertheless,_ when it comes to the use of synthetic cannabinoids in the wild, in 'Spice' and 'Toon~Zee' type products, _all bets are off!_ There are credible reports of people _dying_ after literally just one or two tokes off of joints containing this muck, and people very often wind up smoking it inadvertently, often after being spiked maliciously. Now more than ever - don't smoke anything you haven't rolled yourself, or at the very least, seen being rolled (or prepared) in front of you by implicitly trusted friends - ie, better friends than the ones you shared that bong with! Anyway, sorry, I hadn't meant to write a dissertation!
I'm pretty sure everyone wanted you to cover this virus because Dead Meat covered this movie recently. I was wondering why two of my favorite channels had videos on the same movie so close together.
At 27:13 he starts explaining that trying to tell someone what the color green is and I really connect with that because I work at a pool and do swimming lessons. It is very difficult to try to comprehend just how to even begin explaining to a 5 year old how to do something that has just become so natural for you.
As someone that experiences aphasia occasionally, I can attest that it. Is. Weird. Out of the blue, while someone is speaking to you, words become....noises. The way I explain it to others is it's like Charlie Brown's teacher: "wha wha wha wa wat." Or I'll say "Put the oven in the chicken" instead of "put the chicken of the oven." It's frustrating (my kids liked it, though, they liked to tease me), but those that know me and my medical history are pretty cool if I tell them I didn't understand. It would be scary as hell if it was permanent or without warning, like in this movie.
This explains why sometimes I hear my family talking in a language I never heard before that I can't make out or recreate, I've also just started misusing words
Not sure if anyone else mentioned this but I think the inciting incident was the accident they mentioned happening to the ice fisherman right at the beginning. They must have unknowingly freed something that was frozen for a very long time and they brought it back with them to town. Grant's honey monologue perpetuated it from there.
I hope this man makes so much money doing this he never stops. Every time I think he's going to have to phone it in due to the subject matter, he manages to render the inexplicable understandable, thereby grounding the "what if" in basic knowledge. Fantastic work.
Hey I just want to say, your advice of mentally yelling "stop" has been minorly life changing this past little while. I've been having trouble with invasive thoughts the past little bit and it just... Really helps to shut them up, even if it's just for a bit. Thanks a ton for that alone, and thanks way more for the amazing content
I used to live in Pontypool. That town had a Chinese food place that was also a pizza parlour AND movie rentals. And a liquor store and a church. That is everything man made aside from a baseball diamond and park. Beautiful though. And no zombies, I think.
@@Poodleinacan there was a Tim Hortons on the highway nearby but you couldn't walk to it in any decent amount of time. Could snow mobile around everywhere though in the winter and dirt bike/atv in the summer. Endless trails.
Some medications can also cause aphasia. I had mild/anomic aphasia when I was on the migraine medication Topamax. Anomic aphasia usually involves forgetting words or names for objects, or not being able to retrieve certain words you want to say. I remember once I was trying to explain it to someone and I couldn’t for the life of me recall the word “aphasia”. 🤦♀️ OT but fun fact, Topomax is nicknamed “dopamax” because it’s cognitive side effects can make you feel very stupid when taking it.
Lyrica (pregabalin) has the same effect on me. The drug was developed as an anti~epilepsy medication, but was found to be very useful for the treatment of severe chronic pain, especially neuropathic pain, and I believe it is also prescribed sometimes for anxiety. Lyrica is a drug that comes with a lot of side effects. This feeling of having words and names stuck 'on the tip of your tongue' seems to be one of the rarer ones, but given that I had always taken a certain pride in having a decently extensive vocabulary, this and the drug's addictive nature, manifested both in terms of rebound pain, and actual 'cold turkey' symptoms combined with feelings of _dread_ and panic, all these things, taken collectively, mean that almost needless to say, such a medication is quite the dubious proposition! I had to balance these drawbacks against the fact that it was the only thing that effectively addressed my pain, the result of extremely extensive leg ulcers, which was so intense that I was giving serious consideration - _very_ serious consideration - to 'throwing the rope over the rafters'. In that context, realistically, I had but one option. Make no mistake though, I made a point of tapering my dose down to the lowest one effective; also, I was lucky in that I seem to have built up a degree of 'tolerance' to this side effect of mild aphasia. The fact though that Lyrica is commonly used as a recreational drug (in Northern Ireland, an hour or two's drive from me, it is probably second only to cannabis as a drug of abuse) not only baffles me - people have described the high that can be gotten from the drug to me as 'manky' and 'grotty' - but given the hideous nature of the withdrawals they are courting, which I'm given to believe can be as bad, or worse, than those from Heroin, it feels me with fear on their behalf for when the evil day comes that the piper has to be paid! Just lastly, I sincerely hope that you're not still being assailed by migraines, or if you are, that they've found something that works better for you than the Topamax (Dope~a~Max 😆 lol!!) without screwing with your head in that way. When I was younger I was _tormented_ by headaches which were so bad they were a major reason for me dropping out of college. Even at that though, I think I only ever had one true migraine headache (ie, along with the pain came the vomiting and the neon lights streaking across my vision!) Definitely one of those things that belong in the "Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy" category!
Oh yeah Pontypool was a testament to how a good film can be crafted whilst confined to mostly a singular place. The idea was absolutely cool and If I am being honest isn't this what research is all about? Diving into the unknown waters and discovering things that we thought were impossible?
The thought disrupting thing you mention actually happens to me pretty often in my dreams to the point I can almost lucid dream now. Usually I'm not self aware in my dreams, but when I become aware that I am dreaming I usually wake up, and that's usually because specific memories are brought up in my dreams that connect to memories of other dreams. I rarely remember anything that happens in real life while I'm in a dream, but I can remember other dreams I've forgotten through similar dreams, and that's what makes me aware (and if I'm not fully aware that I'm not dreaming, I can change the "narrative" of the dream sometimes). I think it's because my dreams are getting so similar that my brain has no choice but to connect them to each other. It's pretty strange. And as someone who has an extremely noisy brain, I have to litteraly try to stop thinking in order to remember words I want to say sometimes. 😂 The words just pop up put of nowhere when I stop struggling to remember. It's very hard for me to do though, and I can only keep my brain quiet for a few seconds at best!
Careful with that. We all think we can control lucid dreaming. Till you experience something you cannot explain. Going to sleep only to wake up later suddenly to the sharp pain of falling in such a way that I couldn't have been walking upright is strange. It's also strange when the dream is an identical and perfect mimicry of your apartment with every corner darker than black. In the dream you float along at about 5 ft horizontal to the floor as if you were still lying down. You float towards an open apartment door as you notice a dark abyss with red eyes beneath the couch watching. I was good at lucid dreaming and doing whatever I wanted and even came up with a way to wake myself up on command so quickly I would still be in sleep paralysis alot of the time. I trained my body to smack myself. Like a fear response. So seeing red eyes and feeling absolute primal fear I did the old self wake up smack. Works best by training your dominant arm to slap across you when things get uncomfortable in the old headscape. I woke up and immediately fell about 5 feet flat to my back smacking my head on the floor. The door was open but otherwise everything was normal again. I had fallen in a way that told my little nerdy ass that I had to have been horizontal and not touching the floor which made no sense at all to the science loving kid that I was. I had kinda accepted lucid dreaming as playing in my imagination back then. I don't know so much now. I have asked spiritual people and they have stated that the dreamscape is potentially infinite and that your dreams might not be the only ones you make it into and your dreams might not be safe from other things getting into them either. Consciousness is barely understood. Despite the amount of fun I had I no longer lucid dream. As a human there is only so much I can do and I'm not about to play with things far beyond my understanding.
This reminds me of the Vocal Chord Parasite in MGSV, it breeds when a certain language is spoken and can be specialized to work for any language currently spoken
I really dig these more esoteric concepts, myself! A disease that infects words, beings composed of sound, retroactive causality, infectious knowledge...I wish more movies would tap into things like that!
I REALLY want you to cover a parasitic infection and infestation from the game Remnant From the Ashes. The Vyxxworm parasite infection according to the lore hijacks the body and the longer it's inside a host or husk a carapace starts growing sort of like an exoskeleton. It also causes a lot different mutations in different species or races of those species. It's a really interesting parasite and I wanna know what you could do with a video studying it. I've played the dlc "Swamps of corsus" learning about the parasite and I think you'll enjoy it.
the fact it seems to be a PLANT based parasite is intresting as well in all form sit has some form of roots as a key part of its design or infected a existing creature.
I love it how no matter how daunting the prospect is we will always have a satisfying and considered breakdown of a disease or creature. Keep up the good work Roanoke.
Love this movie. I like how it didn't show you a lot of the violence. You just heard it, or heard it being described. The images my mind conjured up were definitely more disturbing than any movie could've shown. It made you feel more a part of it. Not just watching it.
I will definitely have to find this! The whole idea of simply perceiving or understanding something being harmful is terrifying. I'm a big cosmic horror fan here obviously. It reminds me of a thought experiment that language is alive. It can evolve; it can replicate, and it can aquire and lose 'mass'. However, it can only exist being carried by a host, making it somewhat virus-like. Memes, jokes, and stories can be thought of as true viruses. They start in one isolated 'patient zero' beforejspreading and mutating throughout a population. Sometimes, they die off eitherjby host death (like plagues) or immunity (like dragon worms); otherwise, they continue on. There is another thought experiment: a kill word. It is a word, phrase, sound, picture, color, or any other sensation that induces a fatal seizure upon perception. I say the right word, and your Wernicke's area goes wild, and the chaotic signal spreads to the vital sections of your brain, killing you. This 'disease' appears to be an interpretation of what a combination of these two ideas would look like. The initial phrase causes a seizure in the brain leading to the transmission of the disease. If the host cannot transmit it; the seizure will spread and kill the host. The pathogen changes slightly with every transmission. Such a pathogen would be terrifying, as even just hearing or reading it would put you in danger. Normal pathogens can be studied through microscopes and PCR assays, but even talking about this one would require constant code-switching. This would seriously hamper humanities life and advancement. Humanity's survival, I mean. Humanity's survival, humanity's survival,humanity's survival, humanity's survival
This is honestly quite the interesting "disease" type of deal in any movie. Making language contagious is something that definitely hasn't been touched on before that I can tell in media. So good work on the writers for the movie. And for the explanation on your end makes sense? To my limited knowledge XD
There are two things I love about this channel; the fact that there's always a new upload every time I even think of wanting a new Roanoke vid, and the chapter titles.
Now you've got me thinking on how it would affect someone like me. I have APD (Auditory Processing Disorder) so sometimes when people are talking to me I'll hear them but my mind will just blank and be like "What?". Kinda like having a phone conversation and having it periodically cut out briefly, you know they said something but just don't know what. I'm no doc but I'm sure it would still affect the same way since just gotta hear it in the end.
Me: Autism -> Sensory Processing Disorder, Audio Processing Disorder. Echolalia. Medication Side-Effect: Pregabalin (Lyrica) - Anomic Aphasia. That's just the language stuff, and that's already a lot. But what about *other* disorders, like mood disorders? In the movie, the girl who becomes infected is a soldier with PTSD. I think it's also mentioned that Grant has actually become somewhat agoraphobic since his firing, as well? But I could be misremembering that. But, fr - imagine how mental illness and personality disorders could affect this, as well. Or weird ones, like Alice In Wonderland Syndrome.
I love that you put a summary section in your videos because I haven't watched any of these movies and this is my favorite way of consuming scary content is by watching it through the lens of breaking it down.
I will definitely have to find this! The whole idea of simply perceiving or understanding something being harmful is terrifying. I'm a big cosmic horror fan here obviously. It reminds me of a thought experiment that language is alive. It can evolve; it can replicate, and it can aquire and lose 'mass'. However, it can only exist being carried by a host, making it somewhat virus-like. Memes, jokes, and stories can be thought of as true viruses. They start in one isolated 'patient zero' beforejspreading and mutating throughout a population. Sometimes, they die off eitherjby host death (like plagues) or immunity (like dragon worms); otherwise, they continue on. There is another thought experiment: a kill word. It is a word, phrase, sound, picture, color, or any other sensation that induces a fatal seizure upon perception. I say the right word, and your Wernicke's area goes wild, and the chaotic signal spreads to the vital sections of your brain, killing you. This 'disease' appears to be an interpretation of what a combination of these two ideas would look like. The initial phrase causes a seizure in the brain leading to the transmission of the disease. If the host cannot transmit it; the seizure will spread and kill the host. The pathogen changes slightly with every transmission. Such a pathogen would be terrifying, as even just hearing or reading it would put you in danger. Normal pathogens can be studied through microscopes and PCR assays, but even talking about this one would require constant code-switching. This would seriously hamper humanities life and advancement. Humanity's survival, I mean. Humanity's survival, humanity's survival,humanity's survival, humanity's survival
@@yaboi5012 strangeley enough i like "whisperer in darkness" with it's prototype cyborg aspect, a living brain inside some technological apperatus to keep it functioning outside it's natural body but given i am scifi fan foremost that doesn't surprise me much and the more i digest lovecraft's legacy, the more i see some ideas creeping other authors stories, till this day
Mm. I feel like BLIT is more realistic as a kill agent, and that our brains are differentiated enough in the conscious and linguistic parts that it would have to touch something buried deep in the fish brain to be a universal infector.
Since you've got to such bizarre infections, at this point it would be really awesome if you covered Hiss from the game Control. It's explained as sort of "frequency" virus/being/hivemind, which can overtake humans, sometimes even changing them in the process physically. Probably it's a much larger research, if you'd want to cover it to full extent (as the in-game documents and lore on it is pretty extensive), but it would be amazing nevertheless.
I know this could seem like a silly or odd plot device to just create zombies in a movie. But to me, just the thought of not being able to communicate or understand those around is such a simple yet truly terrifying thing. I think we take some simple, every day part of our lives for granted. When taking one of those things away could potentially put us into a living nightmare!
This was fantastic, interesting, and yet at the same time maybe the most confusing thing you have covered yet Roanoke. An interesting but terrifying premise to be sure. I think you did a great job explaining something that can hardly be explained, keep up the great work. On an unrelated note I desperately want to know what the background music you used was because it was wonderful
Never stop making the videos the way you do watching a summary of the movie and how the diseased act and then going in depth on why the disease is doing that to them it makes more enjoyable especially if someone never got the chance to see the movie they can now appreciate it with the knowledge you give us
"I was born in a small village. I was still a child when we were raided by soldiers. Foreign soldiers. Torn from my elders, I was made to speak their language. With each new post, my masters changed along with the words they made me speak. With each change, I changed, too. My thoughts, personality, how I saw right and wrong. Words can kill." - Skull Face
Would love to see you cover the TV show called "The Strain" the way they portrayed vampirism is something I have never seen else where and I think it's a really cool subject.
@@thth-sv4bt I’d say that there has to be lore considering how long the series has been around… I only suggested it cause I got “The Last Stand: Aftermath” on my PS and have been playing the hell out of it and would like to know more
What a fantastic new take on horror. The original audioplay is worth checking out, and it's hosted here, too. Just be ready: it's a different series of events.
Interrupting distructive though spirals and zoning out during intense anxiety is a very valuable skill. Though association games, sarcastic humor and double meanings are brain candy. I enjoy rewatching this video. Keep killing it Roanoke.
Colors can be described to the blind, but it's very difficult. Take red for example. You basically have to think of things that are red and what they inspire in you. Like when you see a metal coil glowing red, you know that it's hot. So red is hot. It makes sense but it's also really weird at the same time.
Unless that person was born blind then telling them about other things that are that colour doesnt really work does it? Plus red can be anything besides hot, like soft and sweet like apples, cherries, or strawberries. It could be anything because colour is simply which light is being reflected into your eyes from that object.
@johnmcalister3620 actually it does, but very few people are able to grasp the concept and use it, in ancient times they would become philosophers, not because they are curious, because they take the time to view the same thing from the same light, differently, how do you describe red to someone who has never seen? You tell them of the heat of a flame, the searing flames of anger, the passion of love, the sweetness of a cherry, the crunch of an apple etc.
@@stormjin2242but that won't mean nothing for someone who's never seen colors lol. they could picture all those things and imagine them being blue for all you know
Alright im gonna say it. If were gonna go with a disease spread by language. You have to do the "Vocal Cord Parasite" - MGS5. Yeah you get some explenation on them but knowing how develpment went on that game, I know that there is way more to them then we got to see.
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That was fascinating, thank you. It makes me wonder. I sometimes mix up words in a sentence- like saying store them at the buy, for example. I also tend to mix up the words for certain colors- mainly the words orange and green, but I've mixed up pink and purple too. And I frequently space on words, having to use workarounds like "thing that opens doors" (doorknob), "thing you hang clothes on" (clothes hanger) and "flat round food" (pizza). My friends and family are world experts at interpreting what I mean by "thingy" too. I wonder if this would help or hurt me if such a thing became real.
On the disrupts thinking, same thing can happen when you need to focus and you are thinking about too many other things. Simply closing your eyes and saying out load “Focus” can help people focus. Thing is, and this goes for all of this, if that technique is used too much it loses its effects. Like anything, you are creating a neural bridge. And language is like that, connecting a sound with a thought. Why use the phone for that piece of tech in your hand and not water? It seems like this virus is attacking those neural bridges. Thou I’d think multi languages people would be more susceptible to the virus having more of those bridges. Not sure how those all work as I’m dyslexic and don’t have the capabilities to learn other languages. Seriously after 2 years of trying to learn French all I know how to say is ‘I speck a little French’ and ‘do you speak English’. Haha. You can see stuff like this is real life thou too; we call them ear worms. Songs mainly, but it can happen with other things and why the idea of lucky numbers are so popular. If I say your lucky number for today is 29; a lot of people will start to see 29 more often. Maybe this isn’t a virus but more a techno-organic feed back loop that the brain can’t shutdown and burns out those neural bridges. Feed back loops happen all the time in the human body. Hearing the the easiest to point out; when you’re hearing goes dead for a few seconds it’s your body responding to a feed back loop it’s experiencing. What if the body couldn’t do that in this case and caused the issues?
LOVE this movie. A fresh idea on the zombie genere in a bottle movie which has never been more pertinent. Awesome job on the take, good sir. Also, you should do a deep dive into The Andromeda Strain. Seems like a no brainer. Keep up the good work. Cheers!
oh i remember this movie... well not the whole thing but certain scenes. Also wow what he said about thinking :what my next thought would be: actually caused me to just go blank for a couple seconds.
kinda reminds me of the horror movie called ''cell'' it also shows some sort of infectious disease that can only be transmitted by sound. would be an awsome summary ngl.
I found this amazing- I haven't seen this movie for years! Last time I watched it was part of a Literary Theory exam of all things. Thoroughly enjoyed!
The first Chuck Palahniuk novel I read was Lullaby, it uses a very similar conceit. Wherein a rash of sudden infant death syndrome is discovered to actually be caused by a passage in children’s book causing a syndrome that results in death… would be a great film
this movie was so damn weird lol discovered it back in college when i was pirating any horror movie i could find and getting drunk as fuck watching them
I always thought Pontypool was more about the impact of words, and more specifically, the impact of the English language. I mean, the "viral payload" seems to be limited to English, and setting the plot in Canada allows for the immediate establishment of one or more "asylum languages", which would constitute French, most Native dialects and the many, many other languages spoken across the country. I always thought that the story implies that there's a kind of semantic bomb that's sort of laid dormant within English for, well, all of the language's known history, and Pontypool just serves as the strange little epicentre of English's final unraveling. This suggests that other languages might also have a dormant kill switch, and that some signifier-signified associations could trigger it in other languages as well. When Grant Massey tries to save his producer by focusing on "kill is kiss", he's effectively pushing her to uncouple the signifier (the word "kill") and the signified (the action of killing someone or something else) which is something only Speech Aphasia sufferers tend to effectively do. There was this guy I knew whose one-size-fits-all response for everything, following a stroke, was "It's Sunday!" and he could lead a mostly normal life with some added assistance. It's hard to condition yourself to consistently assign new meanings to words that had different ones, previously - but the movie posits that this could save most English speakers' lives, in-context. So, in a sense, Pontypool asserts that English itself is viral - which is kind of fitting, considering how it's the effective Lingua Franca of the entire Internet. It's the one most common and effective conversational bridge we have on the World Wide Web, seeing as even people who aren't entirely conversant can still somewhat get their point across.
Great video, it's fun watching your explanations. Although just want to clarify, you mentioned an example that we need to understand word for word when you speak to us. It's not correct - we understand language spoken to us mostly from context as opposed to when we are the ones speaking. When we do, this is when we have to understand each word. That's why it's much easier to understand what is spoken to us rather than speaking it. When learning a foreign language you're always able to understand much more and speak with vocabulary you only know.
Impressed at you for tackling this one, because it really is a bizarre concept if you don't just go with it and try to fully understand what's going on. Infected language and words as disease vectors is just such a fascinatingly alien concept. (Also, anyone who wants to explain the final scene, have at it. That whole thing was weird.)
To me, it's implied that the phrase, "Honey the Cat," started everything. I have a hypothesis similar to Roanoke's, concerning damage to specific parts of the brain and the ambiguity of phrases. For example, the phrase could be either, "Honey the Cat," or "Honey, the cat." In speech, it's logistically difficult to distinguish the two without context. In theory, this could be done with any similarly-constructed phrase or word, such as, "Missing." It could also be, "Miss Sing," or, "Miss, sing," or a number of other different combinations of meanings, depending upon inflection and intent. A lot of people try to recite things when they don't understand their meaning, similar to re-reading something when it doesn't make sense. If damaged, the brain could be unable to just drop the problem, leading to acute insanity due to simple desperation for it to stop. Incorrect words could occur due to the distraction. I know I do the same thing if I'm thinking hard on something and trying to say something different at the same time. The fact it happened over a missing cat could just be a coincidence; it's possible that everyone's brains had already been damaged by a pathogen of some kind and it was just a ticking timebomb. Why it was isolated to English could be an artistic statement on its convoluted construction. As to why people violently expel their innards when they can't share their speech paradox. . . well, Roanoke couldn't come up with one, either.
While the book (eh, don’t read it, it’s so utterly weird it hurts) definitely shows it’s an illness, the movie does something neater (for me at least). Grant serves as something of a contagion for this small town. He brings his big city, big radio ideals to a place that genuinely has the most minuscule news. He tries so hard to make everything extreme (I seriously roll my eyes at the cat diatribe) and take no prisoners. When I think of him “infecting” Pontypool, I think of it more in this sense of a guy who has the ear of a small town and uses that access to shape their world view. Lo and behold, this language leads to literal gd violence and a breakdown in real communication. Metaphors, wooo! Also, I totally dig the idea of 5th dimension consciousness head colds leading to a third dimension language apocalypse.
According to quantum physics, everything has a specific frequency. This affliction seems like someone attached a madness program to the frequency of a specific language via quantum locking. By changing the language you change the frequency and thus break the connection to the madness program.
As a physicist, people really need to stop attaching the word quantum to any random ass unrelated thought they had to make it sound science-y, saying a word has a "quantum frequency" is about as meaningful as saying a desklamp has a genetic code. At this point, it's like the word in popular culture is losing.. all.... meaning. Ah, shit.
This is so difficult for me to understand that I started crying from frustration. It has to same feeling as holding a square block and trying to shove it in a circle hole, but it doesn't fit.
Recently reread Snow Crash, the concept of a viral linguistic pattern that bypasses conscious thought and is picked up and transmitted by the deep structures in the brain seems relevant to this one too.
Trying to understand how this disease works is very hard to say the least, but this looks like a good movie and I'm gonna have to check it out, very interesting concept though.
Few movies make the case for "the movie is better than the book" quite the way Pontypool does. I cannot believe they got this good movie out of that totally crazy book.
2 things 1. The outbreak appeared to start in earnest at Dr Mendes' office and that's why he knows more than most about it, and why he managed to escape to the radio station 2. The National Anthem played over the speakers after what appears to be a power cut, then a generator kicks in. I think the music is a default test audio for the speakers and that's why it started up. He knocked the speaker down with a hammer to make it stop. It still attracted people so they barricaded themselves inside the nearby storage room, and this is where Syd almost succumbs to the verbal disease
Played this video on loop and fell asleep. Woke up the next morning and was able to watch it. Pretty cool concept, and a great video explaining it all.
You know if you cut out the entire movie aspect to this video, it really sounds like a super cool SCP. A memetic virus with the cure and combative ability against outbreaks being scranton reality anchors to fight off higher dimention viruses, or using Amnestics as a temporary cure. Heck if no one has wrote this idea down on the site yet I'll just rip the audio used in the explanation from this as the scientific detailing.
You're gonna love this one I been Making that sounds since I was a kid Is grunting an Regular day to day sound to the point where people spend enough time around me.They just start doing it
I kind of assumed it was a virus that infected everyone already layed dormant then got activated when specific neurons fired. Like in the walking dead everyone was already infected and then came back as a walker regardless of how they died. I figured it was a prion or something made for military purposes since it’s particularly effective against humans.
Memetics are to memes, as genetics are to genes, each help explain the building blocks of their respective puzzles, culture & life. Either way, you did pretty well explaining what seems like a memetic virus with genetic terms.
I came across this movie on a vague website about Lovecraftian horror that was talking about movies that went under the radar like The Void before that came to the forefront too. This is an amazing movie.
I literally only watch the film summaries and skip most of the other stuff, so thank you for going through a movie that (i have issues with, BUT,) legitimately enjoy quite a bit
If possible, could you cover Shaun of the Dead? It’s a good and fun zombie movie whose zombies seem incredibly interesting They seem to stem from a pesticide but that’s as much as I know, it would mean the world to me if you could one day cover it
I wonder when this came out. If it came out in like the mid 2000s it seems Hideo Kojima might have been inspired by this movie for the language virus that appears in MGS V
This was a very disturbing, thought-provoking, and creepy movie. The looks on the people were unsettling. You can tell the people know when they become affected. They have a scared look mixed with anxiety, hopelessness, and knowing they won't be who they where. I think people who are infected are essentially locked in a glass room, where they can see their body do and say horrific things and they can't do anything to stop it.
Hey if you can, give Blood Quantum a try, its a great movie made here in Canada with a mostly native crew and filmed here in Quebec. Its a movie that deserves a chance and it is a zombie movie but the way its handled is an interesting concept.
Yes! I was just thinking how much I wanted someone else to cover that one if for no other reason that I need someone to at least acknowledge the fact that he was allegedly running around for quite some time fully upright after having the majority of his dick bitten off, blood loss alone should have ended in pretty quickly, but he rallied like nobody's fucking business, and God damn it I need somebody else to acknowledge that besides me...
