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Levinson instead takes all focus off of the characters, and instead tries to deliver a complex storyline encompassing many characters. The best "found footage" films (films like "Cannibal Holocaust", "The Blair Witch Project" and the original "Paranormal Activity") work because they tell simple, concise stories, and focus almost exclusively on a small group of characters and their reactions to the story. I think Levinson misunderstood what makes "found footage" work as a sub- genre. Particularly for the climax, which without spoiling anything, focuses on an almost random ancillary character and has very little drama or tension. As though the story was written by a group of five-year-olds going through a sugar-rush after drinking a case of soda.Īnd to make matters worse, the film really does feel like it was plagued with production problems and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of re-shoots. It feels childish and aggravating to sit through. There's no real pacing to be had, and to make matters worse, the overall "loose storyline" is constantly interrupted by small vignettes focusing on various townspeople, which takes away crucial time that could have otherwise been spent developing the story and characters. And because none of these characters actually are associated with each other, the film constantly has to cut between their stories in a jarring manor, relying on very lazy on-screen graphics and some hilariously poor voice-over narration to try and bridge the gaps. The lack of a narrative focus leaves us following a seemingly random array of characters (including an intern who is acting as an on-camera reporter for the first time, a corrupt mayor, a little girl infected with whatever the epidemic is, two scientists, a vacationing family and a number of others) who all receive little-to-no establishment or development.
The bay 2012 icefilms movie#
Nothing in this movie organically works or leads into anything else. The only way to describe it is to say that it felt like Levinson shot about 6 different found-footage movies, then haphazardly cobbled and condensed them together into a single 84 minute release the weekend before this film's premier. The main issue with the film is that it has no guidance, and feels very unfocused and confused. Unfortunately, the promising set-up quickly reveals one of the most fundamentally flawed horror films I've seen recently, and the movie implodes almost instantly due to some blaring fundamental mistakes and mis-judgments on the part of the direction by Levinson, as well as the gag-worthy production and writing. It doesn't follow any specific modern horror clichés- there are no zombies, ghosts or other boogeymen to watch out for, the horror comes from the fact that something is killing everyone on increasingly epidemic proportions, and nobody is sure if anyone is safe, nor the cause. During the Fourth of July, an outbreak of what appears to be a virus or fungal infection begins to infect hundreds of citizens in the town over the course of a single day, causing their lives to come apart in horrible, violent ways. The film is centered around a highly classified catastrophe that allegedly occurred in a small Chesapeake Bay town a few years ago, which was suppressed by the FBI and CDC to prevent widespread panic in the US. But in a very tragic twist, Levinson instead completely misfires, delivering a film that is so fundamentally unfocused, so over-written and confused, and so poorly thought out, it is arguably the worst major-release entry in the "found footage" sub-genre of the past decade. Levinson, a very capable filmmaker and arguably a living master of cinema with many high-quality films to his name, really should have been able to pull through in the very simplistic pseudo- documentary style that the "found footage" sub-genre thrives on. Barry Levinson's 2012 "Found Footage" horror film "The Bay" should have been a surefire hit.