The Bay is presented as the found footage of the summer. No ghosts here, no haunted house with slamming doors, this new montage of fake video archives describes a nightmarish day in a small American coastal town. Its inhabitants will live a 4th of July party very quickly disturbed by what seems at first to be a strange epidemic before ending in a nightmarish invasion.
The case having been hushed up by the American government, The Bay is presented as a montage of videos recovered via a website and commented by an apprentice journalist who was on the scene at the time of the disaster. Video chat of a young girl, report of a couple of oceanographers, surveillance cameras, police videos, stolen moments during the escapade at sea of two lovers…. This choice to multiply the sources allows this found footage to avoid the soporific rhythm of films of the same genre. It also allows for an ambitious chronological structure that allows for the crossing of the genres of faux-documentary, ecological thriller and horror film. To the images taking place during the famous day, other images, taken from past archives, are added, revealing throughout the film the true (and repulsive) content of the evil eating the inhabitants from the inside.
Presented as “believable”, the ongoing catastrophe in The Bay is all the more gripping. It brings together several ecological themes that are unfortunately a little too topical, from steroids given to farm chickens to waste treatment. There is also a touch of conspiracy, with the authorities as zealous in the cover-up as they are completely out of touch and useless during the crisis. As for the rest, we find the eternal post-Jaws clichés with the rotten mayor having covered up the problem for too long…
In addition to the surprise of finding Barry Levinson (Rain Man, The Secret of the Pyramid…) as director, there is also the surprise of discovering a film with gory effects that are sometimes really disgusting. The real nature of the invasion being conducive to dirty effects, the director gives himself a lot of pleasure and multiplies the shots of infected bodies and other graphic joys, even if it means using CGI that are sometimes badly integrated.
Among all these good intentions, a black point unfortunately becomes very quickly annoying: by trying too hard to deal with several plots in parallel, they are finally reduced to very little. The script is so busy trying to get its rather heavy ecological message across, even hammering the same bits of footage several times like a poor man’s Michael Moore, that it completely forgets about the characters, who are often reduced to simple demonstration tools. We expected a little more from the journalist’s journey, which seems to be going on for the whole film, or from the couple – with the pretty Kristen Connolly – whose story is completely overlooked. We don’t even talk about the fate of the oceanographers’ couple, the big joke of the film, whereas the potential “monstrous aquatic beast” was very attractive…
Let’s also note that “the bay” has the merit, contrary to the usual found footage, of being intelligent in its narration. In addition to confronting us with various potential scientific explanations, and therefore rational, to this epidemic (use of very professional terms, interviews with doctors…), Barry Levinson will very quickly in his film influence us in the choice of the most probable cause of this disaster by pointing out the pollution of the bay (we have the right to a very well detailed analysis of the water). Messages very much focused on ecology (pollution of the sea), environment and sustainable development (extinction of aquatic species) that push us to translate this epidemic within the human species as the punishment exerted by Nature on those who have destroyed it in part.
It is also an opportunity for Barry Levinson to openly criticize a government (but also the mayor of the city) which, as we can see in some films, prefers to cover up the affair rather than provoke a general panic and the exodus of the inhabitants from the city.
