Okay folks as promised I am going to give a quick review of the found footage film “The Bay.” 2013. Okay normally I rail against any kind of found footage movie because in their quest for making it look authentic they make it often unwatchable. Shaky cam, garbling the footage and other tools takes away from the film. The Bay had a few moments in which this happened but the over all footage was viewable and had decent audio.
Setup:
The film begins with a young lady being interviewed via skype about the events that transpired on the 4th of July in the sleepy little shore town. During the setup you learn that a chicken farm is dumping its waste into the bay and that a pair of marine biologists investigating the environmental effects died of mysterious circumstances. While yes it is a bit heavy handed with the environmental messaging it still doesn’t quite beat you over the head with it.
Now what happens next is part of a series of stories that are intertwined into one well done piece. It does jump around a bit from story to story but it doesn’t do it in a way that will lose you even if you are like me and have ADHD. As the story begins in ernest you learn that the young lady is actually a newbie reporter given the task of reporting on the 4th of July festivities. Everyone at the state is having a good old time and nothing is wrong at all. Then without warning the real fun begins. A woman starts ranting about her husband and you can see blood on her shirt and lesions on her body. People are doing their best to avoid her as no one wants what she has.
Shortly after this a report of a homicide comes in with the victim basically being gutted and their tongue removed. Now this folks is a warning of things to come.
Now the story starts to fragment into sub stories all revolving around the same plot. A Doctor is on video chat with the CDC trying his best to take care of an outbreak and the CDC is thoroughly confused on the matter as well. A young girl is having a FaceTime chat with a friend regarding her symptoms. The Reporter is now trying to cover the chaos of what is going on. We are also treated to the dashboard of a pair of officers on patrol. Interspersed as well is footage of the Marine Biologists that was shot before the outbreak. The final story is a married couple with their new born making their way to the town to visit family.
Warning Spoiler territory here
As the Marine Biologists story line progresses you learn that a type of isopod parasite gets a bad case of steroid induced growth due to the run off from the Chicken farms. This is where it becomes an interesting case of Body Horror/Environmental Horror. If creepy crawlies get your skin itching then you are not going to be happy when you see some of that footage. You see more of this as the movie bounces through the various videos all with the nearly monotone monologue of the female reporter. The SFX during this is pretty good and most of it is practical effects with touches of CGI here and there. Now as the film draws near the end it gets a bit stupid with the story of the couple with the Baby. I have to admit I had a hard time suspending disbelief with this one. They know it is a 4th of July Fireworks event at this town. They pull up to the pier and no one is around and it is quiet as hell. They make the mistake of getting off the boat and wandering onto the pier. After seeing a few dead bodies on the pier you’d think they’d hop their happy asses back on the boat and head back but the excuse is that the boat is low on fuel. You’d think rather than go further into town they’d look for fuel on the pier and get the hell out of there but once again that was my big issue with that story.
The stories pretty much all wrap up neatly at the end and the Reporter explains what the end results of the outbreak was and how they handled it. I don’t want to spoil any more than I did already so I will say out of the found footage films this was really came out as a well finished product.
Now the Score card
Concept: The concept here of having multiple pieces of *found* footage tied into one story is really interesting. Most of the pieces were threaded in so that they followed a chronological timeline with the except of the Marine Biologists thread. I really enjoyed the effort made here to make it a coherent story of a small town tragedy stemming from an environmental issue. They don’t get too preachy with the environmental issue either and instead keep it nicely tucked in so that it flows with the story but slightly in the background.
I give it a 5 out of 5 for concept.
Implementation: As I said above the threading of the stories here worked out really well and really did not drag with the exception of the opening of the movie. Even better is that the filmmaker did not feel the need to distort the footage of the film to make it feel *authentic*. The sound quality is fairly good even if there is one error with the police dashcam recording the sounds of an officer speaking to dispatch even though the actor clearly was not touching his radio(Don’t think they use handsfree radios for police but if they do I stand corrected.). Even the CGI is not that bad in this and the practical effects are sure to my your skin shiver as your see people with horrible blisters on their skin and some of the other more interesting effects.
I give this movie another 5 out of 5 for implementation.
Overall: I can find very little about this movie not to like and if you want a good body/environmental horror I would highly suggest it. Right now its on Netflix streaming so I would say go and watch this and hopefully we can get more from this filmmaker in this style and for future found footage filmmakers this should be required viewing.
I give this another 5 out of 5 for over all score.
Side note
I can’t find a budget on this film and sadly it did not do well on the big screen making just over 30K showing on 23 screens. I know I rag on found footage and a lot of new filmmakers go this route for the low cost but surely you can still take lessons from this film. Even right now what I am looking for cameras to start filming my own material and one of the things I am worried about is look. So if you are looking to do a found footage please do your home work.
Warped TV
The Bay – 2012
Posted: November 16, 2013 in Movie ReviewsTags: body horror, Commentary, critters, environmental horror, Film, Film criticism, found footage, Horror, isopods, Movie, Movie Reviews, Movies, Opinion, outbreak, Review, Reviews, The Bay, Warped TV
Okay folks as promised I am going to give a quick review of the found footage film “The Bay.” 2013. Okay normally I rail against any kind of found footage movie because in their quest for making it look authentic they make it often unwatchable. Shaky cam, garbling the footage and other tools takes away from the film. The Bay had a few moments in which this happened but the over all footage was viewable and had decent audio.
Setup:
The film begins with a young lady being interviewed via skype about the events that transpired on the 4th of July in the sleepy little shore town. During the setup you learn that a chicken farm is dumping its waste into the bay and that a pair of marine biologists investigating the environmental effects died of mysterious circumstances. While yes it is a bit heavy handed with the environmental messaging it still doesn’t quite beat you over the head with it.
Now what happens next is part of a series of stories that are intertwined into one well done piece. It does jump around a bit from story to story but it doesn’t do it in a way that will lose you even if you are like me and have ADHD. As the story begins in ernest you learn that the young lady is actually a newbie reporter given the task of reporting on the 4th of July festivities. Everyone at the state is having a good old time and nothing is wrong at all. Then without warning the real fun begins. A woman starts ranting about her husband and you can see blood on her shirt and lesions on her body. People are doing their best to avoid her as no one wants what she has.
Shortly after this a report of a homicide comes in with the victim basically being gutted and their tongue removed. Now this folks is a warning of things to come.
Now the story starts to fragment into sub stories all revolving around the same plot. A Doctor is on video chat with the CDC trying his best to take care of an outbreak and the CDC is thoroughly confused on the matter as well. A young girl is having a FaceTime chat with a friend regarding her symptoms. The Reporter is now trying to cover the chaos of what is going on. We are also treated to the dashboard of a pair of officers on patrol. Interspersed as well is footage of the Marine Biologists that was shot before the outbreak. The final story is a married couple with their new born making their way to the town to visit family.
Warning Spoiler territory here
As the Marine Biologists story line progresses you learn that a type of isopod parasite gets a bad case of steroid induced growth due to the run off from the Chicken farms. This is where it becomes an interesting case of Body Horror/Environmental Horror. If creepy crawlies get your skin itching then you are not going to be happy when you see some of that footage. You see more of this as the movie bounces through the various videos all with the nearly monotone monologue of the female reporter. The SFX during this is pretty good and most of it is practical effects with touches of CGI here and there. Now as the film draws near the end it gets a bit stupid with the story of the couple with the Baby. I have to admit I had a hard time suspending disbelief with this one. They know it is a 4th of July Fireworks event at this town. They pull up to the pier and no one is around and it is quiet as hell. They make the mistake of getting off the boat and wandering onto the pier. After seeing a few dead bodies on the pier you’d think they’d hop their happy asses back on the boat and head back but the excuse is that the boat is low on fuel. You’d think rather than go further into town they’d look for fuel on the pier and get the hell out of there but once again that was my big issue with that story.
The stories pretty much all wrap up neatly at the end and the Reporter explains what the end results of the outbreak was and how they handled it. I don’t want to spoil any more than I did already so I will say out of the found footage films this was really came out as a well finished product.
Now the Score card
Concept: The concept here of having multiple pieces of *found* footage tied into one story is really interesting. Most of the pieces were threaded in so that they followed a chronological timeline with the except of the Marine Biologists thread. I really enjoyed the effort made here to make it a coherent story of a small town tragedy stemming from an environmental issue. They don’t get too preachy with the environmental issue either and instead keep it nicely tucked in so that it flows with the story but slightly in the background.
I give it a 5 out of 5 for concept.
Implementation: As I said above the threading of the stories here worked out really well and really did not drag with the exception of the opening of the movie. Even better is that the filmmaker did not feel the need to distort the footage of the film to make it feel *authentic*. The sound quality is fairly good even if there is one error with the police dashcam recording the sounds of an officer speaking to dispatch even though the actor clearly was not touching his radio(Don’t think they use handsfree radios for police but if they do I stand corrected.). Even the CGI is not that bad in this and the practical effects are sure to my your skin shiver as your see people with horrible blisters on their skin and some of the other more interesting effects.
I give this movie another 5 out of 5 for implementation.
Overall: I can find very little about this movie not to like and if you want a good body/environmental horror I would highly suggest it. Right now its on Netflix streaming so I would say go and watch this and hopefully we can get more from this filmmaker in this style and for future found footage filmmakers this should be required viewing.
I give this another 5 out of 5 for over all score.
Side note
I can’t find a budget on this film and sadly it did not do well on the big screen making just over 30K showing on 23 screens. I know I rag on found footage and a lot of new filmmakers go this route for the low cost but surely you can still take lessons from this film. Even right now what I am looking for cameras to start filming my own material and one of the things I am worried about is look. So if you are looking to do a found footage please do your home work.
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