Sound has rarely been dealt with in the horror genre, yet carries immense importance for the mood of the films. For one film in particular, the Canadian Pontypool (Bruce McDonald, 2009), sound has a central role to play, creating a divergence from other, contemporary horror films. The current style of horror cinema has for the past five years been dominated by the so-called torture porn films, emphasizing grisly and extremely visual depictions of torture, pain, dismemberment and death. The success of films such as Saw (James Wan, 2004) and Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005) has spawned a host of imitators and sequels, in many ways reminiscent of the cycle of slasher films in the 1980s. However, there are signs that some horror films are currently moving away from this emphasis on visual terror and instead moving the monstrous and the terrifying back into off-screen space. One of these films is Pontypool, which follows William Burroughs’s dictum that language is a virus. In Pontypool, however, it is only the English language which carries the virus, turning people first into echoes: beings who are only able to repeat the phrases they hear others say. In this way, the language of the affected people breaks down and finally they must kill to end the pain of utter lack of communication.
I will argue that Pontypool is not only an example of a change currently taking place in horror cinema, but is itself also critical of the recent cycle of horror films with an overemphasis on visceral images. In contrast, McDonald has chosen to scale back on the visual effects and have Pontypool remain a one-location film, set in a soundproof radio studio where reports of the virus and the attacks of the infected only come through via the radio waves. As such, it is a subtle film, locating the horrific infection in language and sound, rather than in onscreen space. In this way, terror is placed in what Michel Chion has referred to as the acousmêtre (The Voice in Cinema 21), thus moving away from the primacy of the image and calling for a renewal of horror cinema emphasizing mood and suspense over graphic exploitation.