Nothing wrong with that, but audiences lured in by the trailers may be disappointed. Levinson, a major director (" Rain Man," " Wag the Dog") seems more interested in spreading a green message than terrifying viewers. Contacts between an emergency room doctor and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta are well done, and not reassuring.Īlthough there are some scary moments here, and a lot of gruesome ones, this isn't a horror film so much as a faux eco-documentary. 0shares SHARE TWEET EMAIL PRINT Bay Day: Levinson Mines Horror Genre to Surprising Effect In what may be one of the year’s most curious entries in the horror genre, The Bay, master filmmaker Barry Levinson makes a found footage screamer that works to great effect. Local doctors and police try desperately to call for help, but find it difficult to get a response on a busy holiday. It goes without saying that the local mayor ( Frank Deal) denies any problem, having learned from " Jaws" that it is better for people to die than for tourism to be affected. Bay Day: Levinson Mines Horror Genre to Surprising Effect In what may be one of the year’s most curious entries in the horror genre, The Bay, master filmmaker Barry Levinson makes a found footage screamer that works to great effect. The reasons for the mutation are hinted: run-off from a giant chicken farm, where the poultry feed is laced with steroids, and a possible radiation leak from a nearby nuclear reactor. The film has received mostly positive reviews from critics, with a 76.
Identified as isopods, the creatures have mutated into carnivores the size of big cockroaches and begin to devour their victims both from the outside in and the inside out - a nice touch, that. The Bay is a 2012 American mockumentary horror film directed by Barry Levinson and written. The film has received mostly positive reviews from critics, with a 76 'certified fresh' approval rating and an average rating of 6.
#THE BAY 2012 REVIEWS TV#
None of this imagery is terribly new or fresh, but they land thanks to a combination of strong storytelling and believable special effects work - the latter aided, perhaps, by the fact that The Bay's found-footage conceit means little of it is in unforgiving, crystal-clear HD.As the film opens, a young TV journalist named Donna Thompson ( Kether Donohue) recalls a terrible July 4th a few years earlier when a waterborne parasite began to attack swimmers and other local residents. Puddles of blood, severed limbs, half-eaten human faces, and squrming larvae also make apperances.
#THE BAY 2012 REVIEWS SKIN#
If you delight in watching giant mutant isopods eat their way out of a man's neck, or another one writhing under the skin of a person's abdomen, The Bay is more than happy to help you indulge in those sights. Levinson ably delivers on The Bay's gory premise. The Bay delivers a unique and disturbing take on the mockumentary style, but the story lacks a true. Its lead, insofar as there is one, is a onetime aspiring reporter named Donna Thompson ( Kether Donohue) who narrates the proceedings via video chat in 2012 other notable figures include the oceanographers ( Christopher Denham and Nansi Aluka) who discover Chesapeake Bay is a toxic stew, a persistent doctor ( Stephen Kunken) who bears the brunt of the hopsital's suddenly increased workload, and a remote CDC worker who can't make heads or tails of the goings-on in Claridge. While The Bay is less about specific characters than about the town's story, it has a handful of recurring key players. Combine that with Levinson's commitment to (relative) plausibility and incisive understanding of human nature, and we're left with an eco-horror film whose scares linger long after the credits roll. The format does precisely what it's supposed to here, ramping up the dread through the illusion of reality.
The world doesn't necessarily need another found-footage horror film, but Barry Levinson's well-crafted The Bay reminds us why there are so many of them to begin with.