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The Bay - DVD Review
By James Whittington, Sunday 17th March 2013
The Bay - DVD Review
Momentum
Certificate 15
Extras: Inside The Bay - Featurette, Trailers
The found footage genre has been around for sometime and was starting to look a little stale. Luckily The Bay has arrived injecting some originality into it. It’s even more surprising to learn that it comes from the director of Rain Man.
The quaint coastal town of Claridge, Maryland thrives on the safe, tranquil and abundant waters of Chesapeake Bay. During their annual Independence Day celebrations, a gruesome plague is unleashed, quickly infecting the residents and turning them against each other.
Bloody and graphic, The Bay comes from the producers of Sinister and award winner Director Barry Levinson, who together deliver a stark, disturbing and truly nerve-shredding tale of an ecological nightmare. Made up entirely from digital footage taken during "the incident", The Bay is a smart take on the found footage idea, similar in design as the last few reels of The Chronicle meaning we get footage not just from handheld cameras but from security cameras, webcams, off-air TV broadcasts etc.
The voyeuristic feel to the film makes it feel as if you’re intruding into a very private admission. The whole story is held together by a Skype interview with key witness Donna (Kether Donohue) who was working as an Intern reporting on the Independence festival. We get to see how the whole horrible event unfolded and how an innocent celebration turned into a gruesome disaster. One of the key sequences that highlight just how graphic the movie is going to be is when the crab eating contest turns into a regurgitation display of meat and blood. Talking of which the effects are quite superb with the strange little creatures being wonderfully realised in CGI. The cast handle the bizarreness of it all with honesty. There a few clunky performances but on the whole the film is well delivered and just goes to show that this genre can still retain a few surprises.
The Bay is a well made and rounded ecological horror experience with plenty technical expertise on display to show others (are you listening the makers of the Paranormal Activity franchise?) just how to inject originality into the genre.
Related show tags: 4 STARS, FOUR STARS MORE REVIEWS
Knives and Skin - Original Soundtrack
Posted on Thursday 30th January 2020
Knives and Skin - Original Soundtrack
Nick Zinner
Lakeshore Records
Knives and Skin from director Jennifer Reeder was one of the strongest and most original movies from FrightFest 2019. Its hypnotic and sometimes surreal plot contained some superb set-pieces of nerve tightening drama. To make the film even more memorable it had a score which added a delicate beauty to the whole experience.
Part suburban nightmare, part neon-soaked teenage fever dream, this tantalizing mystery traces the wave of fear and distrust that spreads across a small Midwestern town in the wake of a high school girl's mysterious disappearance. As the loneliness and darkness lurking beneath the ve...
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Edge of the Axe - Blu-ray review
Posted on Sunday 26th January 2020
Edge of the Axe
Arrow Video
Certificate 18
I must admit, Edge of the Axe is one of those late 80s slashers that passed me by when it was originally released. Maybe because I was tired of the genre by then, maybe because the concept of it being a Euro/American horror just didn't appeal to me, or just maybe there was something better to rent out that week! Anyway, this cut on its original release in 1989 due to the amount of axe on show but thanks to Arrow video we can now view uncut with all chopper moments intact!
The rural community of Paddock County is being rocked by the crazed exploits of an axe-wielding psychopath, who stalks the night in a black trenchcoat and mask. A...
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The Beyond - Blu-ray review
Posted on Monday 13th January 2020
The Beyond
Shameless
Certificate 18
There are some movies that horror fans have multiple copies of, for me it's The Evil Dead, Halloween and Zombie Flesh Eaters. I have loads of editions in my loft on tape, laserdisc, DVDs, and now lovely Blu-rays and, where I can, 4K editions. Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981) is one movie that could also take up a shelf for all the different editions and versions I own as for some reason I'm drawn to it whenever I see a new release, even if it's just for a new cover!
This time around though Shameless have something rather cool and a bit different for fans of this Fulci classic but more on this later. For those new to this title, The Beyond i...
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Vault of Horror presents The Gates of Hell Trilogy (Coloured Vinyl)
Posted on Thursday 19th December 2019
Vault of Horror presents The Gates of Hell Trilogy
Demon Records
Following the success of the first two Vault of Horror vinyl releases, Demon Records have pulled out all the stops to deliver another sublime piece of audio that should form part of everyone's Christmas list this year.
Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy of movies delivered some of the most controversial pieces of horror cinema at a time when horror was entering the "video nasties" period and the genre, as a whole, was frowned upon. Fulci grabbed this chance to push the envelope further with movies which celebrated the limits horror could go to and by doing so opened the doors - ...
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Anna and the Apocalypse - Blu-ray review
Posted on Monday 9th December 2019
Anna and the Apocalypse Blu-ray Second Sight Films Certificate 15
Musical horror movies aren't a new thing. In fact, there's been far more than you first think such as Stage Fright (2014), Cannibal: The Musical (1993) and Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) and all became smallish cult hits. The problem with most is that sometimes the storyline suffers from trying to force as many songs in as possible. There's no such issue with Anna and the Apocalypse.
This wonderfully wacky piece of seasonal cinema has all that you'd want and more from a rom-zom-sing-a-long-com!
It's Christmas, is under threat from a zombie apocalypse, forcing Anna (Ella Hunt) and her friends to fight, slas...
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Judy and Punch - Film review
Posted on Wednesday 20th November 2019
Judy and Punch
Picturehouse Entertainment
Certificate 15
Release 22nd November
If you're tired of sequels, predictable plots and unimaginative situations then writer/director Mirrah Foulkes has something really special for you! By turning the traditional story of Punch and Judy totally on its head, she has delivered a directorial debut that is bold, brash and bloody good fun.
In the outlandish town of Seaside, located nowhere near the coast, puppeteers Judy (Mia Wasikowska) and Punch (Damon Herriman) are trying to resurrect their marionette show. The show is a hit due to Judy's superior puppeteering, but Punch's driving ambition and penchant for a drink lead to an ill-fat...
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Ghostland - Music from the Motion Picture
Posted on Friday 18th October 2019
Ghostland - Music from the Motion Picture
Georges Boukoff, Anthony d'Amario and Ed Rig
The Omega Productions Records
Pascal Laugier's Ghostland (known in the UK as Incident in a Ghostland) was one of the highlights of FrightFest 2018 and proved once and for all that this director was a master of the sinister and murky.
Produced ten years after Martyrs, the movie was more considered in its tension building and was in its strange way a contained a classic fairy tale structure.
The movie concerns the aftermath of a brutal home invasion experienced by Beth along with mother and sister Vera. Forward a few years and Beth is now a horror novelist and has found solace in her w...
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Halloween: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Expanded Edition)
Posted on Thursday 17th October 2019
Halloween: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Expanded Edition) Sacred Bones Double Vinyl
Halloween 2018 was a box-office hit and gave the franchise a much-needed tension injection. It saw the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode and that of original director John Carpenter though he wasn't in the driving seat for this one. Instead he, alongside his son and godson, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies created the score and delivered an atmospheric piece which retained whispers to the past without drowning in them.
The soundtrack album was a hit as much as the movie was debuting at #12 on the Billboard Albums chart and #2 on the vinyl chart, o...
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Asylum - Blu-ray review
Posted on Saturday 13th July 2019
Asylum
Second Sight Films
Certificate 15
When you read that a film has the writer Robert Bloch (Psycho) and been directed by Roy Ward Baker your interest will be pricked. When you also learn it's from Amicus the you know it's a "must have" purchase. This is exactly what Asylum is, a cracker of an anthology movie which has been given the special HD treatment thanks to those lovely people at Second Sight Films.
Asylum boasts an all-star cast including Peter Cushing, Britt Ekland, Herbert Lom, Robert Powell, Patrick Magee, Barry Morse and Charlotte Rampling each who play this bizarre but entertaining movie perfectly straight. This was the fifth portmanteau film from Amicus and is a fine and beaut...
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The House that Dripped Blood - Blu-ray review
Posted on Saturday 13th July 2019
The House that Dripped Blood
Second Sight Films
Certificate 15
Amicus was famous for its anthology movies, and The House that Dripped Blood was one of their most famous ones. It contains a few good scares, as well as more than its fair share of in-jokes and homages to horror cinema's past. Written by Psycho author Robert Block and directed by newcomer Peter Duffell, the film boasts the usual Amicus star line-up coupled with some great set designs and an over enthusiastic score. Oh, a spoiler here, there's no blood!
Scotland Yard's Inspector Holloway (John Bennett) investigates a mysterious mansion with a ghoulish history and a chilling fate for its occupants in four tales...
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Black Moon Rising - Blu-ray review
Posted on Monday 22nd April 2019
Black Moon Rising
Arrow Video
Cetificate 15
Most Sci-Fi thrillers from the 80s often suffered from lack of budget and lack of imagination as they tried to bring visions of tomorrow to an audience weaned on a diet of Star Wars and other such fodder. Black Moon Rising was different, it kept its hopes high but kept itself in the here and now and viewing some thirty plus years after its initial release only fashion and the odd dodgy piece of SFX lets its age be known.
Tommy Lee Jones stars as Sam Quint, a master thief working for the government who hides a computer disc loaded with evidence of corporate crime in a prototype supercar, the Black Moon...
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Scared Stiff - Blu-ray review
Posted on Thursday 11th April 2019
Scared Stiff
Arrow Video
Certificate TBA
Arrow Video continue to trawl the vaults of 80 horror fodder and have dug up a title that's taken too long to come to Blu-ray, Richard Friedman's Scared Stiff. Starring Mary Page Keller and Andrew Stevens the movie follows the classic 80s formula of slow-burn, some gore, more slow-burn and cracking final reel, it's a classic well worth getting re-acquainted with.
Keller plays Kate Christopher, a singer who moves into an old colonial mansion with her son and psychologist boyfriend David (Stevens). But when they make a strange and gruesome discovery in the boarded-up attic, it soon becomes clear that the mansion carries wi...
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