Reviews
‘Affection’ Is A Macabre Meditation On Memory That Gets Under Your Skin [BHFF Review]
Affection is an existential, claustrophobic examination of the self that’s more than its teases, twists, and turns
“I know the difference between what’s real and what’s a dream.”
Affection is such a rare, ambitious feat on multiple fronts — storytelling, editing, direction — but it’s a film that would absolutely fall apart without the right lead as an anchor. Jessica Rothe has been one to watch ever since Happy Death Day, but she is a goddamn revelation here. She puts everything she has into Ellie and the audience watches her live and die a hundred lives throughout this delicate tightrope walk of a film. It’s Rothe’s best work to date, which is saying something for a performer who is so consistently engaging and watchable.
Even outside of her delivery and performance, Rothe throws herself into a violent physical performance that showcases terrifying body language that’s on par with Isabelle Adjani from Possession or Nell Tiger Free from the more recent, The First Omen. Ellie — every version of her — is such a densely packed character who doesn’t hold back. The way in which her body rebels against itself also speaks to Ellie’s plight in which she doesn’t know what to trust. Reality, or rather her interpretation of reality, continually crumbles and needs to be rebuilt. It’s a fascinating place for Affection to begin that immediately puts the audience on guard as much as Ellie. They’re just as vulnerable and overwhelmed in this psychologically claustrophobic experience.
Ellie has a lot to unpack in Affection and finds herself in a frightening feedback loop in which she suffers from debilitating seizures that effectively reset her memory. Ellie struggles to accept the alleged life that belongs to her, including a husband and daughter who feel like utter strangers, all while invasive memories of a false existence pollute her mind. These parallel thoughts feel even realer than the truth that surrounds her, which prompts Ellie to unravel and have no idea who she can trust, including herself. Affection constantly creates a false sense of security that manipulates when the viewer lets down their guard and when they’re suspicious of Ellie’s situation. BT Meza’s script provides just enough details to create ambiguity over what’s real, yet it’s impossible to watch Ellie’s situation “improve“ without feeling a creeping sense of dread.
What’s so impressive about Rothe’s performance is that it’s not dissimilar to what she had to do in the Happy Death Day films. In Affection, it’s not as if reality itself resets every day, but the shift that Ellie experiences is just as dramatic. Yet through all this, Ellie’s haunted reactions to rediscovering her life again and again and again are completely different than her looping state of mind in Happy Death Day. This is a much more brutal and sullen story.
Affection is high concept horror, but it’s also a very stripped down film that limits itself to a cast of three. Joseph Cross and Julianna Layne shoulder this heavy lifting as Ellie’s husband and daughter. Neither is asked to do as much as Rothe, but they get the job done. There’s particular pressure on Layne, who rises to the occasion as a powerful foil for Rothe. The wrong child actor would have sunk Affection.
This family collectively reckons with big ideas like the loss and erasure of one’s identity. Affection explores deeper questions about what makes us ourselves and if it’s our memories and experiences, or the biology behind it all. It’s a melancholy story about grief, loss, and why these are necessary aspects of life that need to be accepted, not rebelled against. Affection illuminates the toxic, destructive lengths we’ll go to for “love“ and when that justification no longer holds weight and ceases to resemble itself, not unlike the aggressive transformations that Ellie experiences.
Affection is such an impressive debut feature from filmmaker BT Meza. This is a story that’s simultaneously simple and complex, the likes of which would fall apart under a less confident director. Affection pulls you in from its opening frames and doesn’t let go until the credits roll. A disorienting miasma of misinformation leaves the audience unsure of what to believe. This is entertaining, but it’s not enough to save the movie if there’s no substance beneath all the pageantry. Mystery box stories like this are such a big risk because they can fail to deliver beyond the initial setup. This puts tremendous pressure on the film’s ending, which will make or break the whole thing. Affection relies on a massive exposition dump that’s sure to polarize the audience. It pulls this off, but also does beg the question if all this might have worked better as a short film.
Meza’s film is most interested in the philosophical questions and psychological mind games that it puts this family through. However, Affection also builds to some really excellent goopy practical effects that amplify its b-movie to impulses. Affection’s second-half, after its big reveal, is considerably shaggier. However, it also takes much bigger swings and feels like the gonzo grindhouse twin of the film’s first half. It’s like the film transforms from a Black Mirror episode into a Tales from the Crypt installment. It’s a chaotic trajectory that amplifies the film’s tension, rather than letting it deflate upon its big revelations. It’s a smart decision by Meza that keeps the film’s third act as interesting as everything before it, even if it turns into a very different movie.
Affection is a high concept psychological thriller that’s worth the many twists and turns and proves that Jessica Rothe is the queen of horror/sci-fi genre hybrids. Meza is careful to not bite off more than he can chew, even if some elements could be handled a little more gracefully, and this stands tall as an ambitious showpiece. Affection is steeped in existential questions and fears that plague modern society, while it embraces the ethos of the ’80s through bold body horror. Add to that Rothe’s revelatory performance and Affection is a hidden gem that will connect with your mind, body, and soul.
Affection screened at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival; release info TBD.
It’s a day of the month ending in Y, and that means it’s time for another killer shark film. Why? Because they’re inexpensive to make, play into an easy fear, and keep finding audiences willing to give them a spin. The Bay is the latest entry in the shark attack subgenre, and while it’s noticeably better than last month’s Chum, it still struggles to barely stay afloat.
Emma (Francesca Eastwood) and Lani (Dani Oliveros) are best friends who’ve traveled to Thailand for a destination wedding, and a chance encounter at the buffet table leads to an unexpected adventure. Mandal (Alexander Wraith) is a friendly, knowledgeable transplant who connects with nature and makes a living by offering boat tours through the area’s scenic waterways. The trips culminate with the opportunity for tourists to witness a shark feeding with local tiger sharks. The tourists aren’t meant to be the food, obviously, but sometimes accidents happen.
The Bay checks off most of the subgenre’s expected beats – an attractive location, an iffy ensemble of characters, a series of poor choices – but it does a few things differently along the way. For one thing, while we see plenty of sharks in the build-up, the first attack doesn’t happen until past the film’s midpoint. Writer/director Phil Volken fills the time leading up to that attack with engaging enough character beats, some genuine suspense, and an abundance of dialogue about how sharks aren’t typically a threat to people – or threats like people. “Sharks hunt,” says Mandal, “humans kill.”
It’s a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, but it’s also the film’s presiding theme. Sharks don’t want to hurt or kill humans, but “mistakes happen.” Mandal offers up numerous eco-friendly spiels about the role sharks play in the environment, how overhunting could lead to disaster, and how humans are the ones invading their territory. “Don’t act like prey,” and you won’t be bitten, eaten, digested, and shat out by a shark. Pretty simple, if you think about it.
Trouble starts when they toss a chunk of meat into the water attached to a chain and a large female tiger shark gets caught up in it. Mandal’s sidekick, a local man named Ruhan (Ta’imua), panics and starts stabbing at the thrashing creature. He has a history of being bitten by a shark and is clearly frightened, and as the situation worsens, he becomes a far more active threat to the others’ safety than the actual sharks. That character type is pretty common in these films, but it’s a curious choice to make the film’s sole indigenous member of the ensemble the morally weak link.
To be clear, Ta’imua is playing a local but isn’t actually Thai. He is, however, Hawaiian, and The Bay was filmed off Oahu, meaning he’s the only indigenous representation on both counts. The other three characters, all Americans, are brave and willing to risk their own safety for the group, leaving only Ruhan to put a face to the cruel, selfish humans mentioned earlier in the film. It’s certainly a choice!
His performance is somewhat stifled by the desire to make him seem menacing, but it’s passable. The others are equally okay as performers, but it’s only Oliveros’ Dani who stands apart as a spirited individual worthy of viewer fist pumps. Cinematographer Helge Gerull delivers some attractive landscape shots destined to make you consider a Hawaiian vacation, and composer Gad Emile Zeitune finds some effective aural backdrops for the film’s teasingly emotional moments.
Then there’s the sharks. A major drag on the subgenre these days is the use of cheap CG effects (including the abysmal use of A.I. in Chum), but The Bay sidesteps that problem for the most part. There are real sharks here, lots of them, but they appear to be solely present via stock footage edited into the film. Some CG is used here and there, too, with shots being comped together to tighten the proximity between humans and sharks. Most effective, arguably, are the practical effects used to create fins cutting through the water near the characters.
There’s a sense of grounded reality to the shark kills, and while they’re less showy, they’re weightier as a result. Wounded bodies drift away, and the moment where shark nibbles turn into ferocious feasting feels more inevitable and affecting than sudden or scary. The sole exception to the general quality of those kills is the film’s final shark encounter, which doubles down on the poor choices by pairing a silly CG beat with some poorly matched stock footage.
Pretty much every shark attack movie lives or dies on its presentation of the sharks themselves. There are exceptions, of course, with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws being chief among them – everything about that film, from the writing and acting to the directing and editing, helps make it a masterpiece despite the mechanical shark looking goofy as hell outside of the water – but The Bay isn’t Jaws. It’s not even Jaws: The Revenge. Its live sharks are mildly effective, though, and give it a subdued realism that will likely appeal to viewers averse to CG intrusions. Will that be enough to win them over, though?
“When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain… and not necessarily at the top,” says an opening onscreen quote from Jacques Cousteau, and something similar could be said for shark attack movies in general. When you make one of these movies, you enter a well-trodden and densely populated subgenre… and you’re all but guaranteed to not be at or even near the top. The Bay is closer to the ocean floor than the water’s surface, and while that still puts it above the bulk of the genre, it’s probably not enough of a reason to step foot in these waters.
The Bay opens in theaters and on demand on July 17, 2026.
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