The Bay (2012) - 2.5/4

Directed by Barry Levinson of Rain Man fame, propagandizing an ecological message, and presented as a found-footage horror, The Bay is a very strange film however you look at it. The experience it provides is perhaps equally as strange and mismatched as you`d would expect. That`s not necessarily a bad thing.

The plot concerns an unexplained illness that suddenly and ubiquitously breaks out on July 4th in a small, coastal town. Local doctors struggle with the CDC to figure out what`s going on. Individuals enjoying a boating trip come home to find the town a blood mess. And an amateur public access reporter covering the July 4th festivities becomes, with the aid of her diligent cameraman, the world`s eyes and ears for the horrific event. Some time after the incident and the ensuing cover-up, she`s cobbled together her own material and some locals` amateur footage to make the film we see.

What The Bay really had going for it is that it`s probably the purest `mockumentary` horror made thus far. Nearly all found-footage horror films come across as either a few dolts with a camcorder or an overprocessed narrative movie masquerading as found footage. The Bay is, in a sense, an actual documentary of a fictitious event in a fictitious town. The movie plays and evolves like a documentary, following the development of the event, trying to explain it, and in doing so building toward a point.

Because The Bay does play out as a documentary, a lot of the conventional narrative benefits are lost. The closest The Bay gives to a protagonist is the reporter, but she`s no more a protagonist than Michael Moore is in his documentaries. We never feel for her as a character, except perhaps amusement over her ridiculously tight pants. There is, then, a degree of emotional detachment from what`s happening and our emotions can only engage with responding to the events themselves.

Fortunately, The Bay provides quite a few good events to engage with. There are some excellently revolting gore effects. There are some moments that are genuinely intense. Some that are shocking. There are even a number of effective scares. Taking tally, that`s more than a lot of recent narrative horror films offer.

Where The Bay does suffer somewhat is in finally explaining the mysterious disease. The explanation comes as a mild let-down because it`s slightly silly and a bit short on imagination. But, the disease must be explained to make the ecological point and the explanation given serves that well. Chicken feces, water treatment, the CDC--who knows what the point really is, but these are some vague targets. The explanation also ties the film in with 1950s nature-amok movies and could really be seen as parodical of ecological scaremongering.

Ultimately, the experience of watching The Bay is uneven, but strangely satisfying in many ways. I have no idea what Levinson was really going for with this movie, whether it`s an eco-horror message-movie or big, mockumentary joke, I just know that once I got into The Bay, after the first thirty minutes or so of wondering what I was watching, I enjoyed it.