Monday, July 29, 2013

The Bay (2012)

College student Donna was an intern for a local news program and  was assigned to report on the 4th of July celebration in the seaside village of Claridge.  But what started as a day of fun turns into a day of horror when people develop blistering rashes which quickly progress to something worse which causes such intense pain that  they want to die, which is good since death follows soon afterwards.

What no one realizes, including the doctor treating the outbreak and the CDC who he's consulting, is that the illness is caused by a parasite in the water, and the problem is that the parasites are essentially on steroids. This is due to the Mayor's chicken farm dumping tons of chicken waste into the bay. The same bay which  had a little nuclear accident a few years earlier.

The story is presented as an interview with Donna a few years after the event. Donna is trying to get the word out about what really happened that day.  The government confiscated all the  footage shot that day.  But a website has managed to get hold of  footage from security cameras, police dash cams, cell phones, news crews, and individuals.

Donna is not a selling point for this film.  Her narration is annoying, and sometimes she uses the wrong words.  While she wants everyone to know the real story, she's also fixated on how she looks and her entry level reporting, actually noting at one point that an interview was the worst thing that happened . Yes, your tight pants and lack of reporting skills was the real tragedy, not the numerous painful deaths.

Another issue is when the family that has the misfortune of sailing into town discover people dead in the streets, they don't go back to the freaking boat!  Don't risk your baby's life by bringing it into a  town filled with dead bodies. What if the cause of death is a plague or a killer on the loose? Get the hell out of there!

This would have been a much better movie if they'd decided not to go with a found footage movie which jumps around in time and focus.  If it had been a story based movie which followed the natural time line of how things occurred, it would have been far move effective.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

No good can come from a phrase like "From the producers of Paranormal Activity"

Chris Jart said...

Ha! That's for sure. Too bad it turned out to be a found footage movie. It could have been good.