The Bay (film)

Plot

The movie explains the footage was confiscated by the U.S. government until an anonymous source leaked the footage for the entire world to see.

On July 4, 2009, a seaside Chesapeake Bay town nestled on Maryland's Eastern Shore thrives on water. When two researchers find a staggering level of toxicity in the water, they attempt to alert the mayor, but he refuses to take action fearing that he will create a panic. As a result, a deadly plague is unleashed, turning humans into hosts for a deadly, mutant breed of the parasite Cymothoa exigua.

The entire town is overwhelmed by chaos as these aggressive creatures start infecting the people one by one. This spins off into several stories. The most prominent is that of a young inexperienced news reporter and her cameraman, who are in the town to report on the 4th of July festivities. She also explains the occurrences as the movie proceeds in an off-scene personal recording. The other stories include two oceanographers who first discovered the parasites; two on-duty police deputies investigating a residential area; a young unsuspecting couple taking a last swim; a teenage girl using FaceTime to send a desperate message to a friend; a doctor who informs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the developing situation at the local hospital; and, among others, a young married couple with an infant aboard a vessel who sail towards their family's home to reunite for the holidays, unaware of the horrific events unfolding on the mainland.

Cast

Production

The film came about as a result of a documentary Levinson was asked to produce about problems facing the Chesapeake Bay. Although Levinson chose to abandon the documentary upon learning that Frontline already covered the same issue, Levinson instead decided to use the research to produce a horror film which he hoped would shed light on the issues facing Chesapeake. As such when promoting the film he noted that it's "80 percent factual information."

Levinson chose to use the found footage format after thinking about the Pompeii disaster and noting that if such a disaster happened today there would be much more evidence of what happened with him telling Yahoo! "For the very first time in history, you can get a picture of that town, if you collect all the footage from everyone's cell phones and their digital cameras and the Skypes, and the texting and everything else"A byproduct of the format was that much of the footage was able to be shot by the actors themselves as opposed to a more traditional camera crew. According to Levinson roughly one third of the film was shot this way.

Though the film is set in Levinson's home state of Maryland, it was shot on locations in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Reception

The film has received mostly positive reviews from critics, with a 77% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 69 reviews. The consensus states that "Barry Levinson's eco-horror flick cleverly utilizes familiar found-footage methods in service of a gruesome yet atmospheric chiller". It draws a score of 65 on Metacritic, indicating generally favourable reviews. David Cox of The Guardian awarded the film 5 out of 5 stars and called it a "horror film for grown ups". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, however, was less positive, awarding the film 2.5 out of a possible 4, stating "Although there are some scary moments here, and a lot of gruesome ones, this isn't a horror film so much as a faux eco-documentary".