The Bay, 2012.
Directed by Barry Levinson.
Starring Will Rogers, Kristen Connolly, Kether Donohue, Stephen Nunken, Frank Deal, Christopher Denham and Nansi Aluka.
SYNOPSIS:
Chaos breaks out in the small seaside town of Chesapeake Bay when a deadly plague is unleashed, turning the residents into hosts for a mutant breed of parasites.
If you’ve watched the Paranormal Activity films of late, or watched The Blair Witch Project when that was released, and you find yourself itching to see another found footage film, then The Bay may well be what you’re looking for. Yes right now we’re in the flux of a found footage stampede. They’re coming out left, right and centre. Big screen and small screen. It’s possibly the “in thing” of the horror genre right now. Do we really need another? Do we even want another? If the answer is yes, then The Bay will probably satisfy.
Directed by Hollywood veteran Barry Levinson, The Bay takes the found footage genre and at the very least, tries to do something a little different with it. The extent of its uniqueness is limited to just how much found footage is found. It’s a collection of many different “filmed” sources and a video diary from an eye witness, relating to a biological disaster that hits a small town on Chesapeake Bay. What this disaster is, is slowly revealed through the course of the film. Aside from the differing array of footage that at times must have been miraculously discovered, there isn’t anything very fresh about this.
You don’t particularly get any sense of character here. The biggest name in the cast is Kristen Connelly who broke out in The Cabin in the Woods. Her role is fairly small, and not too significant. The protagonist Donna (Kether Donohue), a young local reporter, has little development here. There’s perhaps too much of all this footage malarkey going on, and too little focus on us actually investing in any one person, which to the credit of something like Paranormal Activity you (kind of) do. Keeping it anti-personal aids the sense of the audience being the part of the outsider looking in via news etc, as if witnessing from afar. However that’s just not really what film is supposed to do.
There are some good ideas here but as with a lot of found footage movies it takes too long to get going before we eventually get treated to a few scares and a bit of tension. Aside from a very slight sense of paranoia when you have a drink of water immediately after, The Bay doesn’t particularly immerse the audience like a decent horror should. There are some gruesome moments but the shocks are few and far between, while the film seems to drag.
Genre fans will probably find some enjoyment here, but there are definitely better films in the found footage genre, which in my opinion has surely now run its course. In the end The Bay is just a bit forgettable and if bio disaster films are your bag it will probably leave you craving the Hollywood theatrics of something like Outbreak instead.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Tom Jolliffe
Originally published March 18, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
