Review of The Bay (2012) by Michael Paul M — 30 Dec 2012

The latest excursion in found-footage gets by the standard "Why are you still filming you dumbass?!" problem of the sub-genre by incorporating multiple points of view. The assemblage of camcorder, cell phone, surveillance footage and a few phone calls/voice mails gives the film a much wider berth to tell a larger story. The down-side is that this approach creates a bit of a jumble in the narrative and you wind up watching at a distance; the story is involving, but the characters don't register. Only the narrator who collected the footage remains a constant presence, and, frankly, it's a terribly weak performance.

In the end, the idea is stronger than the execution, in fact, it's down-right frustrating because it comes SO close to being amazing and instead it winds up an interesting failure.