This was absolutely TERRIFYING. Brilliantly written. What a surprise.

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Brilliantly written? What planet are you from? The dialogue is awful and cheesy, it's like every character walks around narrating everything they see and every emotion they feel out loud, it's horrible. It's hardly terrifying but what scares people is different depending on the person so you can have that. The writing on the other hand is so full of plot holes and 2 dimensional characters it literally made me cringe during multiple points in the movie. I was embarrassed for the director who is clearly out of touch with how people actually talk, react and interact.

i stopped after 13 minutes.
and it wasn't because i was 'terrified'.

IMO:

Terrifying: yes. Brilliantly written: maybe no. Surprise: yes (I expected something much worse.) underrated: maybe

Anyway, I really liked this movie. It didn't have any really big surprises, but enough small ones, so it slightly surprised me few times. I didn't like the few jump scares, but there were only few of them. There were also few unrealistic things, but generally it was believable. Also few plot holes annoyed me slightly.

The Finnish DVD back cover text was confusing and wrong. "The parasites first take control of victims minds and then their bodies." So I was expecting zombies.

I will respectfully disagree. If anything, I found it to be boring and exceptionally poorly written. I would venture to say to say that I found the film to be about on par with Silent Hill: Revelation 3D as one of the worst horror releases of 2012. And in fact, I found the two films shared many of the same detractors and issues in terms of feeling aimless, contrived and thoroughly unscary with their reliance on gross-out gore effects. Although kudos for finding it entertaining and well-made. I simply did not.

I suppose my main problem, which I have mentioned before on other threads, is that the film fundamentally is a confused, unfocused mess with far too many production issues, plot contrivances, and under-developed storylines to ignore. It has no aim, and dives headlong into a series of poorly edited story vignettes that it jarringly cuts back and forth between.

This is what my head was thinking the entire time: Ok, so the film's about this reporter. No wait, it's about these scientists. No wait, it's about some little girl on her iPhone. No wait, it's about the reporter again. No wait, it's about some random woman's family on a boat. No wait, it's about these two teenagers who are introduced and immediately killed off. No wait, it's about the CDC. No wait, it's about some Sheriff deputies. No wait, it's about the reporter again. No wait, it's about that little girl again. No wait, it's about a corrupt mayor. No wait, it's... it's... it's not about anything!

It felt like the film was cobbled together from about six different films. And as a result, none of the characters get any development beyond one-dimensional descriptions.

Add to that a plethora of storytelling betrayals, and the plot just unravels. I mean, this is literally a film where the sort-of lead character literally just walks away from the movie before the final act, forcing us to focus on a random ancillary character (the woman from the boat) we don't care about, just so they can build a contrived climax out of bad gross-out gore and some of the most poorly executed jump-scares I've ever seen. I honestly think that the entire climax was added in re-shoots, because it felt like a different film entirely and didn't work with anything that had come before.

I found the environmental message to be about as subtle as a brick to the head. The acting was atrocious. (Donna the reporter sounded like Microsoft Sam in how monotone and emotionless she was.) The music was bland and unneeded for this sort-of mockumentary/found-footage style, and made the film feel all the more artificial. The digital effects were uniformly poor. The sound editing and quality was some of the worst I've heard. The revelation of what is causing it felt underwhelming. The constant attempts at phoned-in socio-political commentary actually made me slap my forehead and shout "That's just freakin' stupid!" (When we head someone say something along the lines of: "What was that group? Al Queda, I think they were called? Maybe they did it?!" My head sank into my hands, it was so contrived and silly)

This is a film that just gets worse and worse the more I think about it. It's one of those movies that actually was able to make me angry that I had bothered watching it.

And FURTHERMORE, this is my signature! SERIOUSLY! Did you think I was still talking about my point?

OP -

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Brilliantly scary, works in every respect.
More documentary than film.

The surprise is that Barry Levinson directed this - a 71-year-old veteran of film & TV, not someone 40 years younger.

I don't understand why it wasn't marketed better either.
Perhaps its potential audience was suffering from found footage fatigue.
Pity.

You want thoughtful horror?
Look no further

I wouldn't employ the word "brilliant" when talking about "The Bay," but it did hold my attention for 90 minutes and basically did its job. In the increasingly tired found-footage genre, it worked better than most.

I was happy it remained plausible (as opposed to "realistic"), at least as much as one can reasonably expect from a low-budget thriller about a fatal mystery infection. For once, people didn't turn into cannibalistic zombies for no apparent reason, and the plot did not involve aliens, a shadow government conspiracy, or a genetically engineered virus. I'm not a biologist, but the explanation for all hell breaking loose seemed plausible enough to be creepy. Could some variation of this really happen? I have no idea, but it's a heck of a lot less silly than, say, "alien virus = zombie apocalypse, because of course it does."

I see many people complaining about the script. A found-footage film shouldn't have a great script . . unless you're used to people on your home movies speaking like the characters in "Network," or a Tarantino film. If you're making a movie like this with the intent that it feel like reality, people would be making inane small talk and saying things they wouldn't normally say because a camera is in their face. Chewy, considered dialogue would be as out of place here as would spontaneous musical numbers.

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I have meddled with the primal forces of nature and I will atone.

I thought it was a great idea executed perfectly
I liked that the horror was a bit more subtle than most in your face minute after minute pop up horror now a days

The story itself was just *beep* creepy and it was refreshing to see