"The Bay" - - The Future Of Found Footage?

\


First off, "The Bay" is not a zombie movie. Even though the trailer kind of implies it at the end, there are no zombies in this film so if you watched the whole movie waiting for zombies you will be disappointed.

That was my experience, and coupled with other shortcomings in the film, I was prepared to write a more harsh review than this one. But while I was prepping everything for this post, I found there was a "Director's Commentary" so I re-watched it with the commentary and something happened.

The movie got better.

I think the first reason I liked it better the second time was the fact I knew there was no zombies in it, so every time they showed a corpse or someone walking down the street covered in blood I wasn't like "Oh sweet zombies!" only for the scene to change to something else. Watching it the second time I knew what it was about and was able to appreciate on a different level.

The Found Footage genre tends to be low on the totem pole of narrative style. At least in a first-person story you get inside the head of the protagonist. In Found Footage it's first person with none of the inner monologue. That's why Found Footage movies are known more for their gimmicks than their plots.

"Paranormal Activity," "The Bliar Witch," "Cloverfiled," "Diary of the Dead," "The Zombie Diaries," the list goes on. Short on plot, big on events.

Then you get movies like "Chronicle" which is a film with a plot and interesting character development that uses Found Footage to tell the story rather than be constrained by the limitations of the genre. And that's the pedigree of "The Bay."

Using everything from websites, emails, Facetime videos, Skype, camcorders and news footage, Academy Award-Winning director Barry Levinson tells the story of an outbreak in a small town. It's not an original story, it has all the same clichés as any SyFy channel disaster flick. It's one of those movies where the Small Town Mayor says stuff like: "What do you mean stop the festival? Do you know how much money we'll lose" as people are exploding in a shower of blood and bugs. We've seen this movie before but never presented in this way.

What apparently happened was the director was going to do a documentary about pollution in the Chesapeake Bay but for whatever reason scrapped the project. He then took all his notes and decided to make a fictional version telling the same story. The monster in this movie is caused by a mixture of steroids and chicken poop run off (millions of tons of each) as well as other contaminates. This soup turns the water into a breeding ground for cymothoa exigua, a creature that eats the tongue of a fish and burrows into it's mouth, becoming a new tongue.

Real picture, unfortunately

In the movie these parasites basically just make you do gross things. Sometimes they eat the tongue, sometimes they burst out of your stomach, or shoot through you like a bullet. They do whatever the script thinks will be the grossest thing.
`
The movie stutters along at points. There's about 7-8 different stories being told but only some of them are interesting. The Doctor's story, and his dealing with the CDC is by and large the best segments of the film. They seem creepily authentic and the acting in these parts are top notch.

This split screen is the most compelling thing in "The Bay"

The worst part of the movie, and when I say worse I mean "almost made the film unwatchable" is the main story of the reporter. The frame of the story is two years after the event, this reporter is doing a Skype interview to discuss the footage. She is basically the narrator and this wrap around is completely unnecessary.

We'll be watching a scene of a couple on a boat headed towards the danger zone of no idea of what is coming. They'll have some playful dialogue. Then the Narrator will drown them out and say "Look at them, they're so happy. They have no idea of what they are headed towards."

Really? Thanks for filling me in, I had no idea!

The Narrator does this throughout the film. The first time we meet the Doctor she says "He treated 300 people that night. Then he died." Why did you tell me that? What purpose did that serve.

I bet the director didn't think the movie had a strong enough narrative with just the spliced footage so he added the wrap around and overall narration. But it actually ruins the movie.  She will describe exactly what you are seeing or she will give you information that ruins the movie. That's not a narrator that's the person who sits behind me at every movie theater.

This movie is ambitious. It may be the future of found footage. But with a weak by-the-numbers plot and scene-destroying Narrator, I'd give "The Bay" a pass.