Okay, can we stipulate up front that the contemporary horror movie totally sucks? That a genre that has devolved to the lame grand guignol torture porn of the Saw series or endless remakes of not particularly good to begin with Japanese techno-ghost stories has not exactly acted, as they say, like a great people?

And don't even get me started on Cloverfield, a Blair Witch-derivation (right away you've got problems) in which the filmmakers, apparently deliberately, chose not to include anything resembling a plot, identifiable characters or discernible action.

Okay, I'm exagerrating to make a point, but I bring all that up because I just chanced across a current fright flick that not only scared the pants off of me but actually had some interesting and original ideas in its head. Specifically -- what if William Burroughs' theory that language is a virulent alien organism was actually, literally, true?

I refer, of course, to the Candian indie Pontypool, a fabulous zombie variation on Night of the Living Dead starring Stephen McHattie, an underrated actor most recently seen in Watchmen, but don't hold that against him.

The plot:

Shock jock/Imus simulacrum Grant Mazzy (McHattie, in a virtuoso performance) has, once again, been fired from a big city station and is reduced to doing the early morning show in the small town of Pontypool, broadcast from the basement of the burg's only church. But what begins as another boring day of school bus cancellations due to a massive snow storm inexplicably turns deadly as bizarre reports start piling in of people speaking in tongues and commiting horrendous acts of mindless violence. The kicker: There's nothing about any of this on the news wires. Before long, however, Grant and the small station staff find themselves trapped and surrounded by marauding zombies whose insane behavior is being caused by a virus spread by the English language itself. And they're faced with a truly existential dilemma: Do they stay on the air in the hopes of being rescued or are they in fact providing the virus with its ultimate leap over the airwaves and into the world?

I'm late to the party here, obviously; my colleague Pam Grady gave the thing four stars in these precincts last April in a review that I think is right on the money. I would add, however, that as you can tell from the above synopsis, the thing unfolds, more or less, like a stage play, with much of the action taking place on a single set -- the radio station in the church basement -- and that part of the fun of the film is watching how director Bruce McDonald manages to turn that seeming limitation into a dramatic device that's both very scary and a metaphor in its own right.

Here's the trailer to give you a taste of the wonderfully claustrophobic feel of the piece.

Bottom line: This is probably the only horror film in recent memory (with the exception of the great Korean monster-on-the-loose flick The Host) that doesn't insult your intelligence, and you need to see it immediately. There's no DVD yet (I believe one will be coming out in November) but if it's not currently playing at an art house near you, I am pleased to report that if your cable system has On Demand, all you need do is get over there and click on "IFC in Theaters" posthaste.

You're welcome.