The Bay is what I suppose you would call a found footage film, but in structure I'd call it a horror mockumentary. It's about a mysterious outbreak in a coastal town that all seems to center around the fish in the bay. The story is set several years after the outbreak ravages the city, and we see leftover footage cobbled together from the one young student reporter who happened to be there covering a different story. This is the kind of horror movie that is very easy to make when you have no money and no equipment -- found footage is always or often intentionally made to look cheap so it's a great entry point, but as a result a lot of found footage is also extremely sloppy and lazy and amateurish. This one, however, is really stellar. There are some truly terrifying moments that use the found footage gimmick at its best and make smart choices about what we can and cannot see that were clearly made for dramatic effect rather than just effects limitations. The story itself also certainly hits a little harder after a couple years of a global pandemic where nobody could quite figure out what was going on, but this also meets the body horror angle in a really effective and interesting way. Definitely a horror movie I would suggest folks check out if they haven't. It totally works for me.
How it entered my Flickchart:
The Bay > The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair (1990)
The Bay > Key Largo
The Bay < The Goodbye Girl (1977)
The Bay > Spencer
The Bay < Down With Love
The Bay > Face/Off
The Bay < Buried
The Bay > Beautiful Boy
The Bay > See You Yesterday
The Bay > Yojimbo
The Bay > Summer Wars
Final spot: #623 out of 3792, or 84%.
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