Last week we saw the larger-than-life zombie comedy ZOMBIELAND rolling across the sun-drenched, wide open spaces of the US of A, with a loudmouthed, Stetson-hatted Woody Harrelson leading the charge. PONTYPOOL couldn't be further removed, apart from a bigmouthed hat wearer. Set in the dismal snow-covered winter of small-town Ontario where Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie from WATCHMEN) has ended up as his career as a shock-jock continues its downward spiral.

Reduced to talking about the weather and the traffic from a radio station in the basement of a church, Mazzy is always trying to bait his audience, but under the strict control of his producer (Lisa Houle) and her assistant (Georgina Reilly). The morning starts to get weirder when reports of a mob attacking a doctor's surgery then turning on each other start to emerge. Mazzy, shut in his booth, reports on events as they start to unfold.

Surprisingly, for a movie about someone talking on the radio, this manages to develop quite a lot of tension, and from the beginning it is our imaginations that create the zombie hordes, until they actually arrive at the radio station.

And the overall conceit of how the zombies are created in the first place is very clever considering the setting of the film. Unfortunately it is difficult to be more specific without giving away some of the important plot points of the film. In fact, I believe there is a special circle of hell reserved for so-called film critics/reviewers who give away film spoilers - right next to the one reserved for people who have their computer desktop covered in files.

Suffice to say, this is one of the smartest zombie movies that has been around in a long time, and it can be enjoyed by people who don't even like the sub-genre because it is so well written and performed.

PONTYPOOL is out on general release in the UK now.