That’s Pontypool, Ontario, rather than Pontypool, South Wales; and this is a rare cerebral horror movie rather than just another zombie flick. Not that we ever really see the flesh-eating hordes – but, holed up in a local radio station beneath a church in a one-horse town in deep winter, we hear garbled reports of the carnage taking place.

Beginning with a Fort-like meditation on the hidden chains of causality linking names, words and events and ending with a tip of the hat to Godard, Pontypool tells the story of jaded radio DJ Grant Mazzy (the excellent Stephen McHattie) as he tries to make sense of this unseen apocalypse with the help of his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and the voice of weatherman Ken Loney, flying above the clouds in his (imaginary) Sunshine Chopper. Filled with claustrophobic unease, brain-pinging wordplay, and echoes of everything from Prince of Darkness to Groundhog Day, Pontypool imagines a linguistic end times where killer viruses spread through the English language itself and the medium is very much the message. If Chomsky and Derrida had remixed Night of the Living Dead, then it might have looked something like this wayward and exciting little gem of a film.