Movie Review: THE BAY (2012)

There are plenty of things in the world that are absolutely horrifying.  You know, like spiders, clowns, blood, feet… to each their own!  Now, here’s the point of the former sentence: note everyone is scared of these things.  Something that everyone SHOULD be afraid of?  Your local government poisoning your water with chicken poop, then you drink it and turn into a boil-covered, creepy mess of blood and guts falling out of you because a parasite invaded your body and ate your organs from the inside out.

If you’re not scared of that, I’m pretty sure you’re a liar.  Of, I’m going to have to hang out with you.  You’re going to help me survive the zombie apocalypse.

The Bay (2012) tells the story of a small town in Maryland where a parasitic outbreak compromises the water, and the health of everyone in town. It’s a found footage film, which is normally not the type of film I enjoy.  I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this in past posts, because I have a problem believing that it’s “found footage” because I know I’m watching a film.  I don’t know, maybe that’s just a weird issue that only I have – I just feel like I know deep down that it’s fake and I’m never able to get into it.

Halfway through this film, I had my boyfriend nudging me to make sure that I was okay because he could tell that my anxiety level was through the roof.  If you all want to know my biggest fear, here it is: contagious diseases that have no cure.  Anything that could contribute to zombies walking the earth, like an illness that would make you want to eat someone’s flesh.  Don’t talk to me about it.  It makes me so nervous.  I think it’s pretty reasonable, considering it could happen.

As the film develops, you begin to follow three different (yet equally important) people. (There are more than these three stories, however these were the three that caught my interest the most). One is an inexperienced news reporter who has decided to document the July 4th festivities of Chesapeake Bay, another is a teenage girl who is trying to FaceTime with her friend to explain to her that something is going horribly wrong in her hometown. And last but not least is the doctor who is dealing with the patients that are arriving (waves at a time) into his emergency room.

These poor people become the only people left around when the parasite begins eating away at everyone in the town. They watch people they know get torn apart from the inside out, kill themselves to escape their inevitable fate…honestly the film is horrific. I had a really, really hard time watching it; my stomach was in knots (both because of the tension and because of the gross gory scenes that were just all-around disgusting) and I decided I never want to drink unfiltered water again.
While I’m sure that I’ll get over my fear of tap water, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get over my fear of crazy parasites running rampant around my town, considering I think it’s something that’s plausible…maybe it’s totally irrational.
Back me up here, guys.

So with that, let me throw in my rating of the film:
Story/Concept: 2
Direction/Style: 1
Scares: 2
Atmosphere: 1
Rewatchability: 1
TOTAL: 7/10

I don’t know if I’d ever rewatch this film just because I didn’t like the shakiness of the found-footage aspect of the film, but other than that, this one is probably one of the creepiest horror films I’ve seen in a while.
My advice to all of you if you feel like you haven’t seen a good scary movie in a while: watch this one, or find a film that targets exactly what you’re afraid of. It’ll work (almost) ever time.

Taylor Krauss
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