10/31/2022 0 Comments The bay 2012 online![]() ![]() ![]() As an unexpectedly frightening throwaway from a once respected filmmaker, The Bay fully deserves its inaugural NYFF Midnight Movie slot. The veteran director, better known for light-hearted dramas, manages to shock and creep us out more often than most other recent filmmakers who've made trendy "found footage" films their particular wheelhouse ( The Bay is produced by Paranormal Activity's Oren Peli). What it is is a deft showcase of Levinson's creative abilities. But since its not part of the festival's main slate, it really doesn't need to be. The Bay isn't necessarily that innovative a stab at horror films. Each heads up their own arc presented through surveillance videos, security cams, Skype calls, etc., allowing Levinson to build a tapestry of parallel storylines that create a sense of both dread and suspense as we slowly grow to appreciate the scale of Claridge's epidemic. The closest we have to identifiable heroes are split among The Bay's multilateral plotline-the film's narrator, naive cub reporter Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue) the overwhelmed doctor at the local hospital, Jack Abrams (Stephen Kunken) and Stephanie ( The Cabin in the Woods' Kristen Connolly), a new mother and former Claridge resident back for the festivities. But the usually genial Levinson mixes things up by diffusing all of these film's elements, including the prominence of its protagonists. The Bay is Jaws crossed with Contagion with a bit of George Romero's found footage horror film, Diary of the Dead, thrown in for good measure. Sound familiar? Well, I didn't say it was original. And, wouldn't you know it, they begin during the fictional Claridge, Maryland's annual 4th of July celebration. Tired of just infecting sea life, The Bay's isopods begin doing the same to humans. This creature burrows into a fish, eats its tongue and lodges itself in the tongue's place, eventually eating its way out of the fish as well. An ill-timed combination of climate changes, nuclear waste, and waste runoff from hormone-injected chickens causes the typical isopod (or sea lice) to mutate into a larger, deadlier version. However, The Bay relocates from Jersey to environs Levinson is more familiar with-Chesapeake Bay, a tourist location ripe with possibilities for maximum carnage. As one recent report says, "There's a horror film waiting to be made about this thing." And so it has been- The Bay is a harrowing, nerve-jangling trifle from a once popular director all but written off in recent years. Cobbled together from a wide range of digital video "found footage," The Bay draws on recent reports of parasitic isopods infecting fish just off the Jersey coast. The most surprising thing about the disturbing The Bay, the first of the New York Film Festival's new Midnight Movie entries, is the fact that Barry Levinson ( Diner) directed it. ![]()
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