Sunday, February 23, 2014

The Bay (2012)

Posted by: Sam Doyle | at 19:20 | Be the first to comment!

My first thoughts when I started watching The Bay were: "oh no, not another found footage film", which was justified considering how many bad found footage films have been made over the last 5 years.

If anything, The Bay is more original and interesting than the other found footage films. The story centers around a small town coastal town located next to an inland bay. The towns folk start falling victim to a mysterious illness, that causes huge boils to form on the skin.  The plot is split between 4 perspectives of the crisis. One is the found footage of a woman trapped on the island and she recounts how everything started and how she came to be trapped. The other cameras mainly focus on the hospital and a doctor there who keeps in touch the local CDC office - keeping survivors to date on the situation.

The other storyline centers upon a family who leave the island on a boat just before the crisis starts who are unaware of the mayhem ensuing on the island behind them. The family return towards the end of the film to discover the town littered with dead bodies.

I like how the film has multiple focus points and storylines which is what makes it unique among found footage films - which usually have a single camera in one location. The special effects were good, with the boils on the peoples skins looking realistic and disgusting.

The flicking the camera  from location to location does make the film seem slightly disjointed at times, and the filming style tends to be more documentary-like rather then horror found footage style. That being said, not a bad effort, not brilliant, but one of the better found footage films of recent years. 









Sunday, December 01, 2013

Aftershock (2012)

Posted by: Sam Doyle | at 21:04 | Be the first to comment!

Aftershock is a poorly produced mediocre survival film that has no scares, lots of cliches and bad acting. The major problem with the film is the unknown cast who were really bland and characterless in their roles. The dialogue was laughable in parts and the hole thing just felt cheap and thrown together.

The duration of an earthquake is only a few seconds long. During the aftermath of which the film didn't seem to know what to do with its self.  The budget must have been an issue as well, because most of the sfx set pieces looked like scenes from those crappy b-movie monster movies like Sharktopus. 

In no part of this was I shocked to see what came next; the whole thing was predictable as hell. Which can be put down to an underdeveloped plot - which the makers of  Sharktopus would actually be proud of.

The first forty minutes of tedious setup seemed more like a documentary about club-18/30 party holidays to Ibiza, and consisted mostly of the leftovers from scripts of the Hostel films. The fact that Eli Roth produced and didn't direct this film is very apparent, it just didn't have the style of dark sadistic torture and gore that I have come to expect from him.

One thing that this film proves without doubt is that Eli Roth can not act, and should stick to the directors chair. He was awful in this, and should have focused his talents on the lackluster script. Things become slightly more interesting towards the end with some moments of suspense and a big plot twist, but can't make up for the rest of this torturous ill conceived guff.

All in all a pretty poor effort, not what I've come to expect from Roth. I just hope he can redeem himself with his next feature.