Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Evil Dead II / Cert: 15 / Director: Sam Raimi / Screenplay: Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel / Starring: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Benny, Dan Hicks / Release Date: April 15th

Genre legends Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and friends follow up one of the greatest horror movies of all time with one of the greatest sequels of all time. Not bad for a motley gang of budget filmmakers and their grotty little cabin in the woods.

Remake and sequel all at once, Evil Dead II brings Bruce Campbell’s Ash back to the cabin, where he hopes to spend a romantic few days with lovely girlfriend Linda. Where this leaves the events of the first movie and its characters is unclear, but that madness and devil-may-care attitude to convention is all part of the film’s charm. Ash being possessed by the force in the woods and smashed face-first into a tree is where Evil Dead II begins. The lone survivor of a brutal massacre (or is he? Were Shelly, Cheryl and Scott ever there in the first place?), Ash’s attempts to escape the woods are thwarted when his dead girlfriend and the lurking demons come back at him for round two.

The humour of the first Evil Dead is brought to the fore for this sequel, which uses an increased budget to unleash its creators’ love of slapstick and extreme violence to torment poor Bruce Campbell and Ash. Forced to spend extended periods of time by himself, Ash is transformed from horror movie stooge to genuine hero and icon. The Evil Dead may be one of the most gruelling horror movies of all time, but Evil Dead II is where Ash becomes the Ashley J. Williams that we all know and love.

Chainsaw strapped to the stump where his hand used to be, and armed with a fistful of boomstick, one time store clerk Ash battles the insidious forces of the Necronomicon, his own demonic possession and much more. New characters are also introduced in the form of some investigating kids (“Bobby Joe!”), but this is always Bruce Campbell’s movie (although Ted Raimi is very memorable as big bad Henrietta). A scene in which Ash brutally beats himself to a pulp is one of the finest, most entertaining fight sequences of all time. Not bad for a one man fight scene. If anything is sacrificed in the shift from extreme horror to horror comedy, it’s certainly not entertainment value. Evil Dead II stands tall with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 as one of the best sequels on the market.

With the film having aged very well anyway, Evil Dead II has never looked better than in this glorious Blu-ray transfer. Accompanied by a host of documentaries and featurettes, it’s a worthy addition to any horror fan’s collection (although the rubber Necronomicon editions remain king). Even the main menu is bloody beautiful. Well, as beautiful as a disembodied hand can get, anyway.

Groovy. Very groovy indeed.

Extras: “Swallowed Souls” – 90 min making of documentary / “Dead by Dawn” – the creation of “Evil Dead II” / “The Chosen One” – Bruce Campbell looks back / “Madman Sam” – cast and crew reflect on working with the director / “Dead Effects” / “Re-animated” / 5 other featurettes / Stills gallery / Audio commentary with Raimi, Campbell and others

Review: Thale / Cert: 15 / Director: Aleksander Nordaas / Screenplay: Aleksander Nordaas / Starring: Silje Reinåmo, Erlend Nervold, Jon Sigve Skard / Release Date: March 25th

While on a routine job for a crime scene deep-clean company, Leo (Skard) and Elvis (Nervold) – who is just helping his brother out and clearly doesn’t have the stomach for cleaning up the remains of the dead – come across a hidden room in an outhouse of a recently deceased loner. Amongst expired canned food, medical books, sketches and equipment they find a beautiful naked woman lying in a bathtub of white liquid. While the woman, known only as Thale (Reinåmo), is initially hostile, when faced with the kindness of the duo, she senses the pair pose no threat. The curious and empathic Elvis discovers how she got there through a series of tapes found lying around. Meanwhile something dangerous is coming.

Inspired by creatures of Norwegian folklore called huldra, and made with a very low budget, this is a low-key affair, but has some nicely handled scares early on, and an intriguing premise. Thale’s origin as a wood nymph, plucked from her natural habitat and relieved of her one noticeable difference – her tail – taps into animal ecology issues, without ramming the message down your throat. There’s great chemistry between the two male leads; siblings who have drifted apart and who each find out surprising things that have been kept from them. Reinåmo has an enigmatic beauty, alternating between tranquillity and danger. To writer/director Nordaas’ credit, Thale’s nakedness (a completely natural state for a huldra) is shot perfectly, in a manner that is in no way exploitative. The traditional folk-tinged score, reminiscent at times of the incidental music in The Wicker Man, adds to the eeriness.

It is only really the CGI that betrays the limited budget, but thankfully the animated creatures are not given an awful lot of screen time. Although marketed as a horror film, there’s a much deeper story being told here.

Extras: None

Review: The Fallow Field / Cert: 18 / Director: Leigh Dovey/ Screenplay: Leigh Dovey / Starring: Steve Garry, Michael Dacre, Angus Kennedy/ Release Date: March 11th

After struggling to find distribution (like so many indie horror films) for over three years, Monster Pictures have finally taken a punt on Leigh Dovey’s throwback to 1970s British rural horror, and good on them for doing so. With other recent releases like Scott Leberecht’s excellent Midnight Son, Monster Pictures are slowly building themselves as a force to be reckoned with as a distributor of quality indie horror.

When amnesiac Matt (Garry) wakes up in the middle of the wilderness with no recollection of the past seven days, he retraces his steps to a remote farmed owned by the brutal Calham (Dacre), a sadist who likes to abduct his victims and subject them to torture in the shed of his farm. Matt finds himself a victim to Calham’s twisted games – but things are not quite what they seem and there is more to Matt’s predicament than anyone could have known except Calham. Meanwhile, the fallow field where Calham’s buries his bodies yields a strange and terrible secret.

Billed as a cross between Wolf Creek and Memento, The Fallow Field also owes more than a little to British rural folk-horror films of the 1970s, such as The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan’s Claw. In this case the countryside that provides the setting The Fallow Field becomes more than just a backdrop to the story, but a character in itself. It’s this twist that makes The Fallow Field all the more memorable, taking it beyond the Switchblade Romance-type story it at first appears to be into something more mystical and M.R. James-like. This genre-bending could have been unconvincing but The Fallow Field benefits from strong direction by Leigh Dovey and good performances by Dacre and Garry (in what is essentially a two-hander) that root it in reality. Despite the rural setting, The Fallow Field is a claustrophobic piece of work and well served by cinematographer Nick Kindon who lends the surrounding countryside (and the farm itself) a real air of menace.

The Fallow Field was shot on a meagre budget but you wouldn’t really tell as Dovey contains his story within the farm and the surrounding countryside, and this all helps to keep the tension cranked up throughout. It isn’t perfect. The early scenes, before Matt arrives on the farm, have the feel of domestic TV drama, and it’s only once we get out into the countryside, with its sense of isolation, that The Fallow Field’s cinematic qualities take hold.

Capturing some of the bleak tones and threat of 1970s horror, and creating a slowly building sense of dread as well as some sudden shocks and visceral scenes, Dovey has made a strong debut with The Fallow Field and as a horror director he knows his chops. Himself a fan of the genre, he grew up watching late night BBC horror double bills and manages to invoke those in his first feature film. Having said that, one of the strengths of The Fallow Field is its sheer unpredictability: just when you think you have a handle on it, Dovey completely wrong-foots you and this makes The Fallow Field all the more compulsive viewing.

Extras: Commentary with Director Leigh Dovey and Producer Colin Arnold / Trailer/ Stills slideshow/ ‘Making of’ documentary

Review: Crawl / Cert: 18 / Director: Paul China / Screenplay: Paul China / Starring: Georgina Haig, George Shevtsov, Paul Holmes / Release Date: Out Now

Hands up if you’ve ever seen a Coen brothers film? Yup, so has Paul China. In an unknown rural Australian town, seedy bar owner Slim Walding (Holmes) has hired a mysterious Croatian hitman known only as the Stranger (Shevtsov) to kill a local garage owner over a business deal that has gone awry. Whilst leaving town with his bounty, the killer finds himself in an accident and shacks up in the home of one of the barmaids, Marilyn Burns (Haig). What was meant to be a romantic evening with her boyfriend for Burns turns into a battle for survival between her and her unwelcome houseguest. Meanwhile, Slim tries to quite literally get away with murder as the police start to investigate the garage owner’s death.

The problem with Crawl is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a noir thriller? Is it a home invasion movie? Is it a crime film? It tries to take elements of all of these and cram them into a Coen brothers love letter. Even the Croat hitman is a poor rip-off of Javier Bardem’s character in No Country for Old Men.

The pace is plodding and disjointed and instead of having fun with a twisted killer holding the smart waitress prisoner, we are lurched back and forth between a brooding atmosphere in the house and the bar, where we are reminded for the umpteenth time that Slim is sleazy and not to be trusted. There’s no real build-up of tension and any pay-off is left flat.

The director uses the title very literally on three separate occasions, highlighting how we all end up crawling in this life one way or another, regardless of whether we are dying, fighting for our lives or just trying to get through another day. This is the only real interesting or clever part of this film. Noir is supposed to be slow-burning, but if you don’t remember to switch the kettle on, it’s never going to boil.

Extras: None

Review: The Six Million Dollar Man – Series 1 / Cert: PG / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Lee Majors, Richard Anderson, Alan Oppenheimer / Release Date: February 25th

What an staggeringly incredible and unimaginable amount of money six million dollars must have seemed back in 1973, when Universal brought the protagonist of Martin Caidin’s “Cyborg” novels to TV in a series of television movies.

That’s right – television movies. The Six Million Dollar Man featured in three feature-length films before becoming the series that would epitomise a mixture of super heroics and science fiction in the early to mid seventies and made Steve Austin (the bionic man) a much sought after action figure twenty years before Steve Austin (the WWE wrestler).

But back to the princely sum of six million dollars – that price tag, which probably wouldn’t even cover his extended warranty these days, is just about the only thing that’s dated about what must surely be RoboCop’s cybernetic grandfather.

It’s intriguing to see how the character developed from the first pilot, which is the origin story. Lee Majors plays Steve Austin as an amiable astronaut who comes across as a likeable country boy. He suffers a devastating crash on a NASA test flight and becomes part of an experiment led by Oliver Spencer, the mysterious head of a secret government department. The film deals with Austin’s emotional struggle to come to terms with his traumatic experiences, before being duped by his shady government handlers into undertaking a suicide mission to Saudi Arabia.

The second pilot, Wine, Women and War, sees a major casting change which would last for the remainder of the show’s five year run – Richard Anderson as Oscar Goldman. Alan Oppenheimer steps into the role of Dr Rudy Wells for a couple of years (taking over from Martin Balsam) before the part was recast in 1975. Here, Austin himself is more of a suave Bond-type character, complete with groan-worthy quips, a tuxedo, Britt Ekland as co-star and a truly awful Bond-like title song performed by Dusty Springfield. It’s also strange to see his bionic abilities absurdly underplayed. The occasional swimming at the speed of a torpedo, a glimpse of an infrared eye for sneaking about in the dark and a display of one-armed super strength are all we get. The slo-mo runs, the bionic vision and the associated sound effects would all come the following year – or in this case, the next disc.

The third pilot – The Solid Gold Kidnapping – again sees Austin in more of a 007-type of caper as the series presumably struggled to find its direction before, in 1974, it launched its first proper season of 13 fifty minute episodes and became the show we all know and remember fondly.

As the series progresses, ex astronaut and super spy Austin is teamed up with TV’s most famous ex-astronaut, late of the Starship Enterprise, William Shatner, also Gary Lockwood of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame and another super spy, Mission: Impossible’s Greg Morris as Majors fearlessly takes on robot doubles, assassins, mad scientists, nuclear threats and snoopy journalists with future Mrs Majors, the late Farrah Fawcett, also making the first of a couple of appearances.

The nostalgia level is off the scale here, and the series is deserving of the long overdue digital re-mastering that has taken place for this release. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait around for the second season as it’s released on the same day.

Extras: Real Bionics & Iconic Opening featurettes / Season One VIPs: A Celebration of Six Million Dollar Man guest stars / Bionic Breakdown / A profile of executive producer Harve Bennett

Review: La Poison / Cert: PG / Director: Sacha Guitry / Screenplay: Sacha Guitry / Starring: Michel Simon, Jean Debucourt, Jacques Varennes, Jeanne Fusier-Gir / Release date:  Out Now

This offering from Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series represents the first ever UK video release of this black comedy from Russian-born auteur Sacha Guitry, until now almost forgotten outside of France. And perhaps there was never one more worthy of the appellation – in over thirty films he acted as screenwriter, director and actor. He also wrote and acted in over a hundred plays.

La Poison marks a slight exception to the rule, with Guitry relinquishing the lead role to a popular character actor of the day, the Charles Laughton-esque Michel Simon, another prolific board-treader, best known for his work with the likes of Jeans Renoir and Vigo. Guitry does appear in the film, however, as himself, spending the first five minutes actually introducing his cast and crew to the viewer before the story begins, in what was by then a time-honoured Guitry film convention.

In a sleepy small town, Paul Braconnier wants nothing more than to do away with his wife (Germaine Reuver) – a slatternly, corpulent, and ill-tempered drunkard. However, it must be said that our Paul certainly isn’t the most magnificent of catches himself, and she too has the same idea, procuring enough rat poison to ‘kill seven people’ from the local chemist. Paul is too fearful of the consequences of committing such a dark deed; until he happens to hear a radio interview with one Maître Aubanel (Jean Debucourt), a Paris lawyer celebrating his hundredth acquittal, of which many were domestic, ‘crime of passion’ murderers. A quick visit to the lawyer to find out the best way of dispatching his trouble and strife ensues, but who will murder who first and will they get away with it?

Running almost like a Gallic Ealing comedy, La Poison stands up incredibly well today, with a sharp wit, a snappy pace, and great performances from all concerned ensuring the viewer is kept entertained throughout its brisk 85 minute runtime. Despite being at times loathsome and idiotic, Simon’s lead character still somehow manages to retain our sympathy; likely because we know that we’re witnessing a powerhouse performance from a highly seasoned actor, or, just as likely, simply because the man is very, very funny. The supporting cast of small-town weirdos, excited by the new-found fame and prosperity that a murder brings to their principality, add a further dimension of questionable fun to the proceedings.

Revered in France prior to World War II, director Guitry found his popularity take a nose-dive after the occupation, during which he was accused of collaboration. Although officially absolved of this, the mud stuck and he found himself completely out of favour with the public and art world taste-makers alike. Whatever the case, La Poison reveals him to be in fact a key filmmaker of his generation, and hopefully this and subsequent releases planned by Eureka will lead to a critical rediscovery of his huge body of work.

Extras: 60 minute documentary on Guitry and the film / Substantial booklet containing archival imagery

Review: City of Women / Cert: 18 / Director: Federico Fellini / Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Bernardino Zapponi, Brunello Rondi / Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Prucnal, Bernice Stegers, Ettore Manni / Release Date: Out Now

In their time, Fellini’s films in colour were greeted as milestones in what was seen as his ongoing decline into senility and decadence, but if a title like City of Women came out these days, critics would fall over themselves to hail it as a masterpiece. It’s brave, imaginative, inventive, and plays freely with the medium of cinema, while saying arresting things about gender and sexuality. And over 30 years on, it’s so far out there it makes Holy Motors look like a tame afternoon TV movie.

It starts off with a randy middle-aged man, Snaporaz (Mastroianni), flirting with an attractive woman on a train (Stegers), then following her off it, only to lose sight of her and find himself at an hotel in the throes of a noisy feminist convention. With yoga, lectures on the vagina and lessons in how to kick men in the testicles, it’s clearly the last place he should be, but his attempts to make his way back to the train station end in farce. Besides, there’s no escape really, as we discover that the whole country is now in control of a lesbian elite.

Summed up in this way, the movie sounds like some kind of anti-feminist tract, but it’s much more than that. It’s full of sequences which you can tell have been plucked straight out of Fellini’s subconscious, and this gives it an authenticity and cohesion far beyond the limitations of any particular agenda. A bit, for instance, where Snaporaz is in the clutches of a bunch of hippies smoking dope in a 2CV next to an airport, under the flight path of the incoming planes. Or a scene in a grand master bedroom, with storm-tossed trees pressing against the window and Snaporaz’s half-naked wife Elena (Prucnal) engaging in menacing Butoh moves. These moments aren’t about scoring points or serving a prospectus, they’re just there, bringing an icy chill with them.

And when it comes to the presentation of women, this film has nothing to be ashamed about. Snaporaz may want to see them as sex objects, but the female characters shirk that role with a shrug or a mocking giggle and emerge as forceful independent beings. Nor is Snaporaz quite the out and out chauvinist he might seem – you can read his unease when he is forced to take shelter overnight with the creepy Katzone (Manni), an ageing playboy whose house is full of guns and erotica.

What really impresses with City of Women, though, is the degree of risk-taking. Check out the bravura sequence where Snaporaz goes on a literal roller coaster of memory and emotion – it’s a wonderful vindication of cinema. The film glows with life in this HD restoration, and comes jam-packed with extras which give fascinating insights into Fellini’s working methods and abiding obsessions.

Extras: ‘A Dream of Women’ – 31 min ‘making of’ documentary / ‘Notes on City of Women’ – 61 min documentary / ‘Dante Ferretti: A Builder of Dreams’ – 22 min documentary about the film’s production designer / 12 min discussion with Tinto Brass about the picture / Substantial booklet containing archival imagery

Review: Dracula / Cert: 12 / Director: Terence Fisher / Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster / Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, John Van Eyssen / Release Date: March 18th

Arguably one of the most pivotal films in British horror cinema, Hammer’s 1958 re-imaging of Dracula comes to Blu-ray/DVD in a new, much heralded, 2012 version, incorporating footage thought long lost. The extra material, amounting to less than 30 seconds of screen time, is nevertheless a wonderful discovery for fans of the picture, and make this an essential purchase.

Sangster’s streamlined screenplay dispenses with a lot of the familiar plot points from Bram Stoker’s novel, for budgetary reasons rather than aesthetic; so there is no Demeter running aground at Whitby, no Carfax Abbey, and only one vampire bride. The action itself takes place in the Carpathian area near Klausenberg, and here, Jonathan Harker (Van Eyssen) is in cahoots with Dr Van Helsing (Cushing), posing as the Count’s (Lee) new librarian; thus the action never has to leave the region. When his mission to kill the bloodsucker fails, he falls victim to his bite, which in turn puts his fiancée Lucy Holmwood (Marsh) and her brother and sister-in-law (Gough and Stribling) in danger as Dracula looks to find another bride.

Despite being over 50 years old, the original Hammer Dracula still hits the mark, providing chills (largely down to James Bernard’s rousing score and Lee’s screen presence), action (at under 85 mins it is very pacey), and more than a touch of the erotic, although nothing as blatant as would come later in Hammer’s legacy. The transfer is fabulous, the colour more natural than ever, while keeping that luscious Hammer ‘look’ we all grew to love. It’s worth noting that despite the reduction from X certificate to 12 (a reflection on changing standards and attitudes), the drama and, especially, the sexual tension are still quite potent, but may be lost on the younger viewers.

The extras included on the disc give ample background for anyone new to the Hammer version, while still having lots for seasoned fans to devour. The commentary from Hammer Historian Marcus Hearn and critic Jonathan Rigby is especially fascinating, as is the Christopher Frayling featurette, with the academic giving a new perspective on the film. The inclusion of the four Japanese reels, presented ‘as is’ before any restoration is maybe a little superfluous (especially as the other featurettes contain the unrestored footage), but does show what a mammoth task the restoration team had, and to their credit, the inserted footage is seamless.

Extras : Two versions of the film; the 2007 BFI restoration, and the 2012 Hammer restoration / “Dracula Reborn” – new 30 min. featurette about the film’s creation and history, featuring, among others Jimmy Sangster, Kim Newman, Mark Gatiss, Jonathan Rigby and Janina Faye (Tania in the film) / “Resurrecting Dracula” – new 20 min. featurette about the film’s restoration, from the BFI’s 2007 restoration through to the integration of “lost” footage, featuring interviews with key staff at the BFI, Molinare and Deluxe142. Also covers the February 2012 world premiere of Hammer’s interim restored version including “vox pop” interviews with fans after the event / “The Demon Lover: Christopher Frayling on Dracula” – new 30 min. featurette / “Censoring Dracula” – new 10 min. featurette on the original cuts to the film ordered by the British Board of Film Censors / Commentary / All 4 surviving “Japanese reels” (6 – 9) unrestored (40 mins)/ The World Of Hammer episode: Dracula And The Undead / Janina Faye reading a chapter of Stoker’s novel at the VAULT festival / Stills Gallery of over 100 fully restored and rare images / Booklet by Hammer archivist Robert J. E. Simpson (PDF) / Original shooting script (PDF)

Review: Lisa and the Devil / Cert: 18 / Director: Mario Bava / Screenplay: Mario Bava, Alfredo Leone / Starring: Elke Sommer, Telly Savalas, Alida Valli, Alessio Orano / Release Date: Out Now

The great Italian director Mario Bava had his struggles and disappointments in his later years, never more so than with Lisa and the Devil – a film that, while not technically his last, has the feeling of a swansong. It’s not his most accessible movie, but it shows this wonderful auteur bowing out in style.

This baroque and puzzling tale sees the eponymous character (Sommer), a tourist, getting lost on an excursion and having a series of increasingly bizarre encounters, which finally result in her spending the night in the splendid but intimidating abode of a blind Countess (Valli) and her son, Maximilian (Orano), who seems to mistake her for an old flame called Elena. Her presence triggers a re-enactment of some unresolved drama of infidelity, murder and lost love. Or so it seems – it’s hard to be sure of anything, because, years before David Lynch and decades before Holy Motors and Berberian Sound Studio, the film twists and turns in accordance to an elusive dream logic.

There’s a pervasive air of melancholy and unease, undercut with a vein of surreal, absurdist comedy: an elaborate feast is interrupted by heavy footsteps upstairs and a wine bottle crashing to the floor. As usual, moments of brutal violence act as a foil to the dreamy lushness of the visuals, but this this time they seem to come out of thin air – a wife repeatedly drives over her husband with a car, crushing him to a pulp, only to fall foul of a mystery assailant herself. It’s cryptic, perturbing, challenging, but, as always with Bava, you come away with a haul of unforgettable imagery (a bunch of bloodstained cadavers sitting around a dining table, a skeleton laid out in a rotting four-poster bed) and it has sequences as fine as any he made. The last reel, in particular, matches for hallucinatory intensity anything conjured up by Dario Argento, the director who stole Bava’s crown as Italy’s prince of cinematic darkness.

The film wasn’t a hit, and later on it was re-cut with new footage into one of those pasta possession flicks that rode the wave of The Exorcist. Both versions are present and correct in glorious HD on this release and treated to fascinating audio commentaries (including contributions from Elke Sommer), with a ‘making of’ tying everything together nicely. While you feel sorry for Bava, there’s a certain fascination in seeing how the material was reshaped, and he would be delighted with the stunning transfers – the depth of Blu-ray immerses you in his strange, valedictory drama more completely than ever, and it’s like you can touch the brocade on Alida Valli’s dress.

Extras: Both version of the film – ‘Lisa and the Devil’ and ‘The House of Exorcism’ producer’s cut / Audio commentary on ‘Lisa and the Devil’ by Bava biographer Tim Lucas / Audio commentary on ‘The House of Exorcism’ by producer Alfredo Leone and star Elke Sommer / Introduction to both films by author and critic Alan Jones / ‘The Exorcism of Lisa’ – the making of both versions of the film / Deleted scene / Original trailers

Review: The Bay /Cert: 15 / Director: Barry Levinson / Screenplay: Michael Wallach / Starring: Kristen Connolly, Will Rogers, Christopher Denham, Kether Donoghue / Release Date: March 18th

The Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, is officially 40% lifeless. Decades of pollution – chemical contaminants, agricultural and urban waste – have contributed to the worrying deterioration of a once-pristine body of water which brought pleasure to hundreds of thousands of locals and American holidaymakers. Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson (Rain Man; Good Morning, Vietnam) became so concerned by the toxic devastation wrought on one of his favourite childhood haunts that he decided to highlight the bay’s plight by dramatising it as an ecological horror movie, merging the conventions of the found-footage format with a specific element of barbed social commentary. But where The Bay undoubtedly works as a gruesome and disturbing body horror, the overriding sense of ‘this couldn’t really happen’ inherent in the film’s outlandish dramatic scenario ultimately serves only to detract from the very real-world problem Levinson is trying to bring to his audience’s attention.

Three years after a hushed-up viral outbreak in Claridge, Maryland, reporter Donna Thompson (Donohue) has managed to liberate and assemble all the recorded film footage – CCTV, camera phones, private video recordings – to tell ‘the true story’ of an infestation of parasitic ‘isopods’ which have thrived on the bay’s plentiful sources of waste material, specifically torrents of chicken excrement routinely (and really) dumped into the water. These squirmy little buggers grow inside the human body, which sprouts suppurating boils and pustules, eventually driving the host mad as they’re eaten inside out. Before long the whole town is littered with the dead and the recovered footage shows the attempts of the local medical authorities and the Centre for Disease Control to isolate the cause of the infection and ease the suffering of the infected and the attempts of those unaffected to stay alive as all around them falls apart.

Levinson himself calls The Bay a ‘cautionary horror tale’ but in reality it’s just another forgettable entry in the found footage genre. Levinson’s message, worthy as it may be, is lost amongst the blood and gore and the pure sensationalism of a story which is often so bereft of real scares it has to resort to a couple of obvious and uncharacteristic ‘jump shock’ moments just to remind us we’re watching a horror movie and not something filmed on a cheap camera phone. The Bay manages to convey a sense of panic and horror but anything more meaningful and, indeed, cautionary, is lost in the general lo-fi schlockery of the entire enterprise.

Extras: Making of documentary / Trailer