REVIEW - THE BAY

Just about the last film you'd expect from Barry Levinson, although the eco-political slant is pushed hard enough that it becomes less a fuel for the horror on show, more a polemical call to action. But the immediate impact (and, in its strongest moments, that's quite an impact) is one of terror and disgust. Shaky-cam found footage horror films are a dime a dozen these days, but whereas most rely on slow-burning tension eventually dissipated by cheap jump scares, Levinson employs a more candid approach towards his horror, an apparent necessity at times given the nature of the material. The imagery is blunt and bloody; only the amateur cam aspect to the photography mitigates the potential gratuity. Levinson is able to make his point without throttling the audience with it. In general, the gorier this film gets, the better it gets, at least in the moment - writer Michael Wallach is smart to lay out in sufficient detail the causes of this hideous outbreak in a small Maryland town, so that each mutilated body is viewed as a victim of both human complacency and ignorance and vicious mutated isopods (I was not particularly afraid of isopods until I saw this film. Now, I feel them on my skin, I see them when I close my eyes, they're coming to get me, I'm sure. I'm rather less concerned about the death and disease - I'm concerned about what will happen to my sanity if I ever see one). In maintaining a linear chronology, which is a sensible move, there's no satisfactory rhythm to the progression of scenes, and it all begins to drag blithely on for the last 45 minutes or so. The screenplay lurches between achieving the requisite realism to an acceptable standard and missing it by a country mile; the same is true of the acting: everyone does a decent job except star / narrator (the narration is a pain, not only because it's poorly scripted but because it's superfluous) Kether Donohue, who is thoroughly atrocious! Almost as scary as those fucking isopods!