Guess When The Bay Trailer Flushed All My Desire to See This Film Down the Toilet

I hate "found footage" films.  I hate that it has become its own genre.  I feel the whole style of filmmaking to be contrived, and just an excuse to produce a wide released film with an extremely low budget.  Most of the innovation and value in the storytelling was done by The Blair Witch Project, which is not only over 10 years old but considered the film that birthed the "genre."  I usually am more prone to chuck things at the TV than get excited about the latest "found footage" film.

This is why I'm annoyed at The Bay trailer.  Because they suckered me into almost caring about this film, and possibly wanting to pay money to see it.

The premise is different than almost every other "found footage" movie.  It isn't about people living in a haunted house or gallivanting in a haunted park.  Or anything haunted.  It was actually an idea that took advantage of the "realism" of using a collection of various handheld cameras.  It is about a viral outbreak, and more specifically, a deadly contamination of the water.  This is something that can actually get us scared, because this is something we believe.  We know that diseases and parasites evolve.  We've heard about deadly outbreaks in the water system.  We're paranoid about what is happening to our environment, and we have entire movement to attempt to go organic since we don't trust what others are doing.  This is a film that fits with our current real live fears.

Plus it looks like it involves a government cover up, which is another thing we all believe too.  We don't trust the government anymore.  We just assume they're trying to keep a bunch of stuff from us.  We would believe they would try to hide an outbreak that killed off an entire town.  This part of the film also helps fuel our real live fears.

I also like that it doesn't look like it was just one guy walking around with a camera for some odd reason.  It is a collection of footage from various video sources.  The film footage seems more believable, and you can understand how it can be created into a film.  It has the chance to really cause you to start believing what you're seeing, and thus make things far scarier.  For the most part, the trailer allowed me to suspend my disbelief. 

Then they threw in one awful scene that ruined the whole experience.  Guess what it is.



This film was about a virus or a parasite.  It was about people dying from an awful disease that may have been created by the government.

So, why the heck did some zombie ghoul werewolf thing jump out at that lady in the car?

I'll tell you why.  Because when people jump out and say "Boo", you often get startled.  The "found footage" genre has decided that "jumping out and saying 'Boo!'" is the ultimate form of scare.  They will do it in every single film.  They'll even do it in a film about parasites that, from what I was taught, aren't really into jumping out of closets to scare you.  It doesn't fit in this film at all.  But at some point some executive was traumatize by a game of Peek-a-Boo as a baby, and has now decided this is the best way to freak out movie goers.

It isn't scary.  Two second after you jump from the 'boo scene", you're back to seeing the film.  You aren't scared or on your edge.  You're just annoyed because your partner is teasing you for falling for the oldest trick in horror.

Scary is some unknown parasite eating through my insides.  That disturbs me.  This film looked like it could be an interesting freak out.  Then it has to resort to the stupidest of all "found footage" tropes.  Now I couldn't care less about this movie.  I hope it now goes direct-to-DVD, and I never hear about it again.

I'm safely back to hating all things "found footage".  Job well done to the people who brought me Paranormal Activity 1 through 56.