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I’m usually a fan of anything morbid. I love the way a movie can make me feel so disgusted that I want to rip my skin off at the thought of creepy crawlies attacking my body … however, when it comes to The Bay, I was left wanting to rip my hair out instead.
The movie was only 84 minutes long but it felt like hours of disturbing, rather than frightening, events.
Trying to become part of a list of movies that put a different spin on found-footage horror films, like the Paranormal Activity series or The Blair Witch Project, it attempts to deliver a terrifying experience. The new stamp on The Bay is to make viewers think about the harm that we cause to the environment.
It did make me think about the effect humans have on sea life, but it was never alarming enough, or even realistic. The only thing it may have done is make this reviewer, who already has a fear of the sea and its unknown creatures, skip the beach this summer.
Meanwhile, focusing on numerous townspeople in the film makes for weak storytelling that never builds up with two-dimensional characters. It could have done with just focusing on a maximum of two, because viewers don’t care whether there were five or 50 characters – all were affected in the same way.
The film opens with a young girl having a Skype conversation with an unknown person in an attempt to ‘tell the truth’ about events that happened in a town called Claridge, US, during the fourth of July celebrations in 2009.
The girl is identified as a newbie journalist Donna Thompson (Donohue) and is the voice of the narration over found-footage archive giving viewers an insight into the catastrophe that occurred during the celebrations.
As the audience views the footage of what seems to be a normal community party, a video of a woman who breaks out in sores and throbbing skin lesions is seen screaming throughout the town.
Shortly after, the whole town develops the symptoms as the camera follows the lives of various standalone characters alongside recordings of a dishonest politician who blames other organisations and people for the problems in Claridge.
Later, a pair of scientists are found dead but the research they had been carrying out slowly uncovers the truth about where the virus originated from.
It turns out the pollution levels in the water are causing full grown flesh-eating isopods to grow at unbelievable rates due to steroid levels from a spill that occurred from the town’s famous chicken farm. These isopods have taken over the town killing 700 people.
All of this is told in the first 30 minutes of the film. Suffice it to say … 54 minutes is wasted!
Stephen Kunken, who plays Dr Jack Abrams is the most believable in the film and is the only character to react the way you would expect someone in that situation to act.
However, Donohue as the main character lacked the emotion and heart as one of the few survivors telling the tale for the first time … needless to say, I didn’t believe a word she said.
Although the story leaves the viewers wanting more and is filled with potholes leaving the audience to answer most of the questions with their own imagination, there were a number of creepy moments, so if you’re expecting a gory movie … this is adequate enough!
