[soliloquy id=”6191″]
Whenever a new disease or infection comes around, everyone panics, even just slightly. Especially when it spreads to the next city to you, then it’s in your town, or the house down the street, and soon you worry it’ll be in your backyard. The Bay, directed by Barry Levinson, doesn’t give anyone time to think about that.
Donna Thompson played by Kether Donohue (Pitch Perfect) was a news reporter at the height of an epidemic in a small town in Maryland. The Bay focuses on Donna’s account of that terrible July 4th day of disaster when a waterborne parasite began to attack swimmers and other local residents.
Identified as isopods, the creatures have mutated into carnivores the size of big cockroaches and devour their victims both from the outside in and the inside out.
As well as Donna’s own personal account and news footage, she also provides us with ‘found footage’ from other sources she has managed to collect. These range from video diaries from phones, Oceanographer footage, security cameras, Skype interviews, and a video shot on board a boat by a young couple who picked the wrong day to take their baby out for a cruise. All of which is narrated by our young reporter. The theory is that all this material has been kept secret in a cover-up of the pollution of Chesapeake Bay.
The creatures themselves, are disgusting and the realism that The Bay’s horror could very well take place in our reality today is terrifying. Sea lice Isopods do actually exist. They feed and grow on the gills of fish before eating the fish from the inside out.
The Bay‘s own spin on the found footage film works well and it manages to string together a very intense story by pulling you into the film through a witness of the disaster who managed to survive. While there’s no real character development and the ending leaves plenty of questions hanging, I enjoyed it regardless
The Bay is definitely worth a watch with the concept of the film being very believable. And frightening.
WICKED RATING: 6.5/10 [usr 6.5]
Title: The Bay
Director(s): Barry Levinson
Writer(s): Michael Wallach, Barry Levinson
Stars: Will Rogers, Kristen Connolly, Kether Donohue
Year: 2012
Studio/ Production Co: Automatik Entertainment, Hydraulx
Budget: (unknown)
Language: English
Length: 84mins
Sub-Genre: Found Footage, Sci-fi, Thriller
