Monday, May 20, 2013

THE BAY (2012) movie review


Bay, The (2012) d. Levinson, Barry (USA)

The populace of a small Chesapeake Bay town falls victim to a flesh eating virus gone supernova (as in the little parasites have grown anywhere from cockroaches to the size of a small dog) thanks to a combination of mindless waste disposal and a dose of radioactivity. However, Oscar-winning director Levinson’s decision to frame his ecological horror effort (co-written with Michael Wallach) within the found footage milieu is one that proves problematic once viewers’ logic circuits start humming, which is early and often.


Cub reporter Kristen Connolly, one of the tragic event’s remaining survivors, serves as our primary narrator whose footage she hopes will shed some much-needed light on the cover-up (which purportedly took place in 2009). A fair premise, but then Levinson breezily introduces clips from hospital security cameras, police squad cars, traffic signals, CDC Skype conversations... For a governmental hush-hush job, there seems to be a lot of leeway granted to our intrepid lid-blowing documentarians.


Though it fails to fully deliver the intended emotional wallop, there are several solid boo-sequences, some nasty gruesome biological meltdowns and you’ll probably hesitate for the second or two before drinking that next glass of tap water. Ultimately, however, the real-life horrors of human negligence and governmental shadiness outweigh anything shown onscreen here.

5 comments:

  1. I really liked The Bay, I certainly felt that it was far and away above many of the numerous shoddy found-footage films that have filled up shelves over the past couple of years.

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    1. I really wanted to like it, but man, the logistics of it just kept coming up and up and up. Watching the behind-the-scenes interview with Levinson, where he was talking about wanting to raise awareness about the (real life) contamination issue in Chesapeake Bay, I wish that he'd just gone with a straight-ahead narrative.

      Plus, saying that it's better than many of the other found footage films is setting the bar pretty low. ;-]

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  2. I don't think we can even SEE the bar any more, haha.

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  3. What a coincidence. I just borrowed this from my library today and plan on watching it this weekend. I will be lowering my expectations, though.

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    1. It's not a bad movie by any stretch. It just isn't all it could be. As I mentioned in the comment above, I wish that Levinson had just done a straight-ahead narrative a la CONTAMINATION. I think that would have registered stronger, since most every beef I have is with the logistics of the format as opposed to the story or the characters.

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