Review of The Bay (2012) by Supadee B — 15 Mar 2013

I don't know what Barry Levinson was thinking, but this was awful. The found footage genre is obviously oversaturated, and he brings nothing new to the table. The first and most egregious problem here: an absolutely awful main actress.

She spends the whole fucking film narrating this fake documentary, and it is just appalling how bad she is. She maintains a monotone voice throughout, and talks like she's been hit upside the face with a tire iron.

I can't even describe how unwatchable she is. Then, you have obligatory jump scares which almost entirely consist of people coming into the frame out of nowhere, or camera zooming right on various spots where the parasites appear, which are basically poor excuses for these scares in the first place.

Also, who's controlling half of these cameras? Sure, there's security footage and drivecams and such, but some of these camera angles could not possibly have existed. Then you have unexplainable music.

Now we all know that documentarians will score their works, but who exactly would commission nothing but foreboding music into something meant to educate the masses? I mean really, think about it. Finally, the story ends up going nowhere.

You spend about 70 minutes anticipating...something, and then, BAM, wrapped up in about ten seconds. And believe me, I'm not exaggerating. The only, and I mean the only thing that was remotely good about this was some of the gore, which may make you look once or twice at the next drink you have.

Barring that, this is one of the worst failures in editing and pacing I've ever had the displeasure of watching. I'm actually angry at how bad this was.