The Bay (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Automatik Entertainment

Runtime: 84 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: On July 4, 2009 a deadly menace swept through the quaint seaside town of Claridge, Maryland, but the harrowing story of what happened that Independence Day has never been told - until now. The authorities believed they had buried the truth about the tragedy, but a reporter has emerged with footage revealing the cover-up and an unimaginable killer: a mysterious parasitic outbreak. Told from the perspective of those who were there and saw what happened, The Bay unfolds over 24 hours though people's iPhones, Androids, 911 calls, webcams, and whatever else could be used to document the nightmare in Claridge.

Review: I love found-footage horror movies, so I try to watch any and all new ones when they come out, but The Bay specifically I had been anticipating pretty heavily after hearing some excellent word of mouth on it out of last year's TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). While it took me a bit longer to get around to it then I would have liked, luckily I was able to catch it recently on DVD, and suffice to say 80-odd minutes later I found myself thinking twice about going for that next glass of water...

In The Bay, an entire small island town during a 4th of July celebration weekend gets infected via the drinking water by small parasitic creatures that eat you from the inside out, mutated to a larger size due to the Government-tampered water supply, and we watch as the fun-loving celebrations slowly descend into panic and utter chaos.

What struck me almost right away here as a pretty ingenuous twist on the overdone found footage genre, was that it actually wasn't so much a found footage movie in the traditional sense as it was a fictional documentary that incorporated found footage elements within it. It has a survivor of the events, after the fact, going back and making a documentary on the events that befell this small coastal town, since the Government and mainstream media have been failing to report on it, and she's making this documentary from edited-together footage of this event from all sorts of different sources – home video cameras, security footage, police car cameras, news broadcasts, recorded phone conversations, webcam chats, 911 calls - just dozens upon dozens of different sources, most of which are professional and thus that means very little shakey-cam stuff for those of you who get headaches or motion sickness from that sort of thing.

Because of this approach, with footage from various multiple sources, both of the event itself as well as small signs leading up to it that hint at something not quite being right, the movie ended up being very creepy (even more so then most other found footage movies that are only from the POV of a single camera) because you start getting a sense of dread even before the characters realize anything is happening. You're given an uneasy suspenseful feeling right from the get go, and while the majority of the movie is a bit of a slow burn, it uses that time very well to slowly, but steadily, increase that feeling of unease and confusion. The movie, and by extension it's creepy factor, is helped along even more-so by the fact that the mutant parasitic creatures that are the cause of everything here – the Isopods – are actual real-life creatures that actually can get quite large in rare cases (seriously, Google Pictures that shit). Even though the movie itself is fictional, the horrific events depicted in it could very easily actually happen, making everything within all the more spine-tingling.

The biggest drawback that keeps you from getting fully invested however, is that aside from the reporter that's narrating the movie, there's not really any main characters to latch onto as everyone else is mostly just background people in various footage, but none really get any significant screen time. Hell, even the reporter lady herself wasn't in a whole lot of the actual 'found footage' stuff, and was completely absent from the final 20 minutes or so.

To be honest, I actually could have done with less of her present-day webcam chats with her boss, as well as her constant narration of everything happening on-screen, because that stuff sort of removed some of the tension by A, breaking it up and cutting in to take us out of what's happening in some otherwise really intense and creepy scenes, and B, outright spoiling things that were to come later on that would have been more of a surprise and more shocking had we not been expecting them. I would have preferred her to have a much stronger presence in the 2009-set footage and just cut out more, if not all, of her present-day webcam chat stuff.

I also wasn't a fan of the fact that there's no real climax to the movie - The movie builds the tension really well, culminating in a very creepy sequence where a family arrives to the town late in the evening only to find it empty of celebrations and dead bodies strewn all over the streets and no idea as to what's going on, but in terms of story structure it doesn't build up to anything at all and it kind of just...ends... and it leaves you feeling like the movie was over before it had even reached the final act.

Those few things aside though, The Bay is a highly enjoyable and quite creepy found footage movie, that acts as a bit of a refresher to an otherwise stale subgenre. This is one that I look forward to re-watching every once in awhile in the future, although it certainly will make you quite paranoid about ever drinking tap water again...

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Mega Piranha (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 93 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: Due to genetic altering, an escaped school of piranha fish are not only on a never-ending feeding frenzy but are also growing quite large, quite quickly, as they make their way to more populated areas.

REVIEW: What can I say about Mega Piranha other then I loved it? It took me a bit by surprise as I thought every other 'Mega' movie by Asylum has so far been mediocre at best and didn't quite live up to the surrounding hype, so I wasn't expecting much from this one either. But by the time the credits started rolling, I was left staring at the screen in wonder at what I had just watched: One really kick ass Asylum-made Mega Monster flick!

Sure, it was made solely to cash in on the then-upcoming summer release of the bigger budget theatrical remake of the famous 70's creature feature Piranha, but that didn't stop it from being any less awesome. Actually, while I have not yet seen that remake, I have seen both the original Piranha and the first remake from the 90's, and I can say with complete honesty that I enjoyed this direct-to-video mockbuster far more then I did either of those.

The movie starts off on a small enough scale, with just a seemingly-regular school of piranha fish in Venezuela on an unexplained feeding frenzy, but it's not until they chomp down on some visiting U.S. senators that a U.S. Government Agent is sent in to investigate, and from there things only go from bad to worse as he discovers, with the help of the brainy scientist who created them (played by 80's pop sensation Tiffany), that not only are the piranhas growing and will keep growing indefinitely, but they're also moving up the water system to the ocean (And yes, the characters are just as surprised as the viewer is at the fact that they shouldn't be able to survive in salt water, but are able to). That gives this movie something that I feel the other Mega Monster movies didn't – a pace of urgency. With the other ones I've seen, the monster or monsters are out there, killing people, sure, but other then that there's no real rush to kill it. In this one, they're racing against the clock to stop the piranhas from reaching the ocean for if they do, they'll never be able to be stopped and the rest of the world will be their feeding grounds.

Most other Mega Monster movies start with the monster being large and is just about the military hunting it down and killing it, where as this one they start off at normal size and we're right there with the characters as they try to stop what they think (at first anyway) is just a small problem, as it grows and grows (both the problem and the fish), becoming more and more dire every few minutes, and adding to the above-mentioned urgency. It has a rate of escalation that many other Mega Monster movies just don't have. Where all those movies start large and remain there, this one starts small and keeps growing as the movie continues on.

Another fine point is that, some select scenes and minor characters aside, the acting in this is actually quite good for an Asylum-made movie and definitely helped sell it to me. There was actually one actor, that while I felt his character was more or less useless after the first 30 minutes and his plot ultimately went nowhere (The Venezuelan military General), I never got tired of seeing him on screen because I thought the actor did such an excellent job at stealing every scene he was in and he chewed the hell out of the scenery. It's rare that the most useless main character is also my favorite, and it's all owed to how well he was portrayed.

Along with the better-then-average acting are also the better-then-average-for-Asylum effects for this kind of movie. From the tiny fish, to the bigger rubber versions, right up to the CGI battleship-sized monstrosities, the effects never failed to impress me with these animals, and the effects for them were on full display in many of the great attack scenes, such as when the small school first kills people in the opening scenes, to the slightly-larger rubber version leaping out of the water just to get knifed by our main hero (played excellently by Paul Logan), or when the giant fish propel themselves out of the water and right into clusters of buildings and exploding on impact (for whatever reason), or when they take down a submarine and battleship - They got plenty of screen time, and it was all used to cheesy perfection. The budget on this movie must have been much higher then Asylum normally works with and as far as I'm concerned, it was money very well spent.

If I were to complain about anything, the only part of the movie where I can find room for that would be the ending. Nothing too major, but I thought the way they ultimately dispatched of the massive school of growing Mega Piranhas, didn't really make any sense. You see, first they try to nuke them and the blast is a direct hit, but by that point there were just too many of them and they were just too large that it didn't really do anything beyond temporarily knock them out. So Paul Logan's character comes up with the idea of ripping open one and the blood will send the others into a feeding frenzy. Ok, fine. Sounds good. Except that there's no reason given at all as to why the fish would suddenly start to turn on each other, beyond that one injured fish. And the thing is, whenever we see a shot of them they aren't eating each other, only that one fish. And then the heroes congratulate each other and celebrate and the movie ends. Huh? But the plan didn't even work. At least not that we, the viewer, saw. And even if it did, isn't it quite possible that some...hell, even one...either survived the feeding frenzy or wasn't even around to partake in it? But they never explore that. The characters just assume that plan killed all of them.

And what was with that kiss between Tiffany and Paul Logan at the end? Nowhere in the movie did it even hint in the slightest bit at a romantic relationship between the two. Talk about coming out of left field. Over all though I didn't let the ending bother me too much as it's just one tiny part of an otherwise great movie.

If this movie is any indication of how future Mega Monster movies by The Asylum will be going, then I'd say they have a bright future in store for them in this market.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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