Bruce McDonald
2008
95 minutes
This is a horror film that was recommended to you by a bartender you know who likes horror films. It's Canadian content, and it also hits a few special interests of yours pretty hard--linguistics and radio. The setting is spooky even before the really weird parts start--most of it is very claustrophobic and it's set in a radio station in a remote part of Canada during a heavy snowstorm. There are only three people on camera for most of the film: the radio host and his producer and another engineer. They have a fourth "man-in-the-field" traffic reporter, unseen through the entire film, who pretends to be providing updates from a helicopter but is actually just sitting on a hill in his beat up car, in a bit that is played off first for comedy and then for horror. The plot involves a sort of William S. Burroughs/Brion Gysin "language virus" which gradually turns people into violently self-destructive zombies, and the hosts spend a good deal of the film hearing disturbing messages from outside and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. It's like War of the Worlds in reverse. And eventually the howling mob in the snowstorm is bound to show up at the radio station. It's all well-done and suspenseful and clever.
You're well familiar that late nights and early mornings at a radio station can attract unsettling happenings, which can be awkward to deal with when there are only a few people around. Two incidents in particular come to mind.
One night just after midnight you were in the radio station preparing for your show when the doorbell rang. The hosts for the show before yours were on the air talking, so you went to get the doorbell. There was a man at the door you didn't know. You assumed it was a friend of the hosts of the show before yours, but you couldn't be sure and didn't want to interrupt since they were in the middle of bantering and announcing the songs they had just played. He had weird vibes, but this was true of a lot of visitors to the station, especially at that hour.
You let the man in and he made a beeline for the studio as if he were on a mission. He stood there and silently stared at the hosts while they finished talking about the tracks they had just played and the shows they had been to recently and what they were playing next. Then they started playing the next track and looked at the man, puzzled. It quickly became obvious to you that none of you knew who this guy was. The man finally declared loudly, "I JUST WANTED TO SEE WHAT THE FUCK YOU GUYS LOOKED LIKE." He then turned around and stalked back toward the door and let himself out. Your fellow hosts were a bit annoyed and shaken that you had let the man in, but they also understood that aside from being a stranger, he wasn't that much weirder than the people they knew who would sometimes show up to hang out.
Another time you were in the middle of your show around 3:30 in the morning when the doorbell rang. You were literally the only human being in the station. You answered the door, wondering who it could be. It turned out to be your friend, Puffy, but to your alarm his clothes were badly torn and he was covered in blood. Puffy was one of your best friends at the time. He was a pretty close ride-or-die friend, but not quite close enough to be an "I need you to help me move a body" friend. It was clear that he was very drunk and very upset. You asked him what happened and he ignored you, simply asking if you could get him a glass of water.
You fetched him water from the sink and calmed down enough to quickly go on the air and announce the songs you had played during that set before playing a station announcement and queuing up some nice long songs to get things sorted out. You asked him again what the fuck had happened to him and finally got most of the story out of him in confusing snatches. The blood at least turned out to be his own. He had been down at the local tavern drinking heavily with a bartender you both knew, which turned into some after-hours drinking when the bar closed. He'd had some recent PTSD triggers, which had understandably spun him into heavy drinking mode--no judgment. The bartender and another patron talked him into coming back to keep the party going with them, so they piled in the bartender's car. However, instead of going home, it became clear that they planned on going to another guy's house to buy and snort some coke. Puffy was a former addict who was glad to be coke free, and even in his drunken brain this sounded like a BAD IDEA. They were just pulling onto the beltline and Puffy demanded they pull over and let him out. They refused, so he bailed out of the moving vehicle before they reached highway speeds. This was not good for his immediate health, but he was drunk enough to do this without being gravely injured. Drunks are pretty good about going limp when they need to. He then got himself up, all bloody and bruised, and staggered the rest of the way to the radio station. They had been listening to your radio show and he knew you would be around. He headed into the bathroom to clean up and then dozed off in a chair while you finished your shift, after which you drove him home. His troubling drinking continued for a few months after this, of course, but at least he stayed sober from the harder stuff. You were just glad this didn't become a regular incident.
Time to choose something different: