The Bay
Dir: Barry Levinson
2012
**
Barry Levinson and Michael Wallach's celebrated found footage horror; The Bay is a very clever idea and perfect for the horror sub-genre. So it's a terrible shame that it has been filmed in the worst possible way. Barry Levinson is a good director, I can see why he'd want to direct one of his own ideas but I honestly think he should have passed this onto someone else, maybe someone with documentary experience? It should have been terrifying but for the most part it is laughable. The camcorder footage looks too professional and the professional shots look too amateur, the script is so bad it made my skin crawl and the editing is totally overcooked. The acting is non-existent. The story repeats itself far too much, we know what the conclusion is within the first 20 minutes but it is repeated again and again through more and more unconvincing sub-plots. It's tiresome. The repeated times the male scientists makes reference to the female scientist's foreign accent is grating to say the least and made me quite angry towards the seventh time. Great idea, it's just that every component is totally wrong. A huge wasted opportunity by someone who seems not to understand both horror or documentary.