Review of The Bay (2012) by Jimmy H — 21 Apr 2017

I honestly can't believe seventy seven percent of critics liked this. The bay has some surprisingly terrible performances in it, the reporter showed no emotion, and said her lines in the same tone of voice every time. The teenage girl using FaceTime with her friend, showing her everything she saw was also thoroughly ridiculous and the actor herself was just a bad child actor. The news reporters were also just bad.

The bay also features extremely cliche jump scares. Infected characters jumping out with a random loud boom accompanying them, because loud noises are scary I guess? Director Barry Levinson never makes an effort to create any sort of atmosphere or tension. Apparently he thought jump scares would be more effective, unsurprisingly they're not.

However I did give the film two stars because I thought the premise itself was a cool idea, and a few shots of the creatures moving through the fish, people, and crawling out of people's necks looked appropriately gruesome and unsettling. I also appreciated when the reporter stopped filming after having a close call with an infected, that's something you never really see in the found footage genre. It was actually logical.

Levinson just didn't seem to fully understand what makes the found footage genre work. Blair Witch worked so well because of how real the performances felt, how genuinely frightened the actors looked. Blair Witch also created a dark, oppressive atmosphere, the bay doesn't even try to do that which is a shame.

Skip The Bay and watch a found footage movie that was actually successful. Don't waste your time with this one.