Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 2012
The Bay (film)
Buy The Bay (film) now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'The Bay' is a 2012 American mockumentary horror film directed by Barry Levinson and written by Michael Wallach. It stars Kether Donohue, Nansi Aluka, Christopher Denham, Frank Deal, and Kristen Connolly and premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. It was released in theaters on November 2, 2012.
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. The footage is gathered from various news reports and home videos, following multiple narrative lines.
On July 4, 2009, Claridge, a seaside Chesapeake Bay town nestled on Maryland's Eastern Shore, thrives on water, both from tourism and from how it benefits the chicken industry. However, the chicken farm has come under fire from some citizens who are concerned about the water quality of the bay due to the dumping of chicken excrement and other toxins into the water, though Mayor John Stockman, who is eager to further Claridge's burgeoning economy and to be re-elected that year, insists the water is perfectly safe. Despite Stockman's proclamations, as rookie reporter Donna Thompson (the individual behind the film's leaked footage) covers the event, dozens of citizens fall ill with severe lesions without explanation. Participants of a crab-eating contest also all begin to vomit violently. Dr. Jack Abrams, the head of the local hospital, is overwhelmed with patients and contacts the CDC, who initially believe the issue to be caused by an unknown virus or fungal infection. The town descends into chaos as people begin dying en masse within hours. Days before, two teenagers are killed by an unknown animal while swimming. Several citizens, including a teenage girl named Jennifer using FaceTime to speak with a friend, report bizarre symptoms, including the feeling of bugs within their bodies. Many die within hours. Mayor Stockman however continues to downplay and deny the situation.
It is revealed that two oceanographers discovered high toxicity levels in the bay months beforehand. After encountering multiple eviscerated fish eaten from the inside out, they realize that the true culprit is the tongue-eating louse, also known as 'Cymothoa exigua'. The isopods have seemingly evolved to affect humans as well due to the high volume of excrement from the chickens from the plant, who were pumped with steroids to promote rapid growth. Because of this, the isopods breed and proliferate at a massive rate, killing off millions of fish and causing 40% of the bay to become lifeless. It is also discovered that the boils and lesions result from the isopods eating their hosts from the inside out. The oceanographers attempt to alert the city's environmental council, but Mayor Stockman, who heads the committee, ignores the warnings. The oceanographers are eventually killed by a swarm of fully-grown isopods (the same things that killed the teenagers) while doing further research, and their bodies are discovered shortly before the film's events. Still, they are initially written off as victims of a shark attack.
Stephanie and Alex Talmet, a young couple with a newborn named Andrew, sail to Claridge to meet up with Stephanie's parents there for the festivities, unaware of the danger as local law enforcement has shut down cell towers. The bridge to the town is also shut down as the citizens are forcibly quarantined. This results in Stephanie missing a call from her mother warning her of the situation in the town and that her father may have to have his leg amputated, as well as having lesions herself. Stephanie and Alex then witness a sailboat drifting aimlessly the bay with no one on it, possibly due to the occupent succumbing to the isopods and falling into the water. Meanwhile, two deputies who have been overcome with calls of people dying, receive complaints of citizens screaming in pain; in a digitally enhanced audio recording, Officer Jimson encounters an infected family begging to be killed. Having gone insane from seeing what has happened and realizing that this is what is happening to the townspeople, he euthanizes them and subsequently murders his partner Paul after one of the isopods bites him. After being confronted by Sheriff Lee and Mayor Stockman, he is also revealed to be covered in lesions; he kills the sheriff (to prevent him from dying as many others have) and then commits suicide. Mayor Stockman, finally realizing the severity of the situation and in a moment of cowardess, attempts to hastily flee the town in the sheriff's police car, only to be killed in a car accident. It is mentioned he could have been saved from the injuries that killed him, but due to the situation, no EMS vehicles were available to help.
Officials at the CDC eventually learn that the water in Claridge contained a slew of toxins and likely had a considerable radioactive rating, but it was never reported previously due to radioactivity not being a quality that is measured in water quality checks by the EPA. Upon figuring out about the mutated isopods and the situation, the CDC head calls the White House. He then tells Dr. Abrams that by now it is already too late, no additional is forthcoming and that he and the staff should evacuate. Abrams reveals he is all that is left as the staff vacated a while back, but refuses to leave. Upon realizing that he too is now infected, he uses his final hours to document the mass of dead bodies within the hospital, among whom is Jennifer, and to now fully explain the situation about the parasites. The CDC also contacts Homeland Security, who reveal that they themselves had received the report about the oceanographers beforehand, but did not report it to the CDC immediately due to not wanting to cause undue panic. They then write off the chaos as happening in a "small town" and declines to offer help.
Donna and her cameraman Jim Hoyt continue to document despite her station's blog being shut down by the FBI. They constantly hear horrific screams and find bloody corpses; one of which has its entire lower jaw and tongue gone, yet is still alive. Donna herself reveals that after that discovery, she never reported anything else and Jim himself later died, likely due to having splashed pool water on his face to cool off and becoming infected. Stephanie and Alex soon arrive to find the town mostly deserted, with corpses littering the street. Horrified and confused, they go into a pawnshop and manage to get ahold of a friend on Skype to ask for help. However, Alex, who swam in the bay earlier, is found to have lesions on his neck, having become infected. He then dies from isopods crawling out his neck, while Stephanie is able to escape unharmed with baby Andrew, though they are frightened by a still living woman hiding in a police car who begs for help before Stephanie hits her, accidentally snapping her neck.
Years later, Donna leaks the gathered footage, revealing that the government managed to kill the isopods by filling the water with chlorine; they then covered up the incident as the result of "unusually high water temperatures" and paid off the few survivors (including herself) and relatives in exchange for silence. Donna guesses that the government may soon kill her for leaking the information and reveals that Stephanie is still living, but refused to participate in the film. The movie ends with shots of civilians innocently enjoying the water of the bay, unaware of the dangers, as 40% of the bay remains lifeless.
Cast
* Kether Donohue as Donna Thompson
* Kristen Connolly as Stephanie
* Will Rogers as Alex
* Stephen Kunken as Dr. Jack Abrams
* Robert Treveiler as Dr. Williams
* Nansi Aluka as Jaqueline
* Christopher Denham as Sam
* Frank Deal as Mayor John Stockman
* Michael Beasley as Deputy Jimson
* Jody Thompson as Deputy Paul
* Andrew Stahl as Sheriff Lee Roberts
* Jane McNeill as Victim #1
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."
According to script writer Michael Wallach, the script originally started out as a short story about a young couple who comes across a dead town. After having pieced together what happened from footage scattered across town, they realize the town had not fully died yet. Barry was happy with the script, and sent Wallach the movie 'JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America' and asked if the movie could be made into a documentary.
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 76% "certified fresh" approval rating and an average rating of 6.6 out of 10 on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 82 reviews. The website's critical consensus states that "Barry Levinson's eco-horror flick cleverly utilizes familiar found-footage methods in service of a gruesome yet atmospheric chiller." It also holds a score of 65 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 20 reviewers, indicating "generally favorable 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".
References
Buy The Bay (film) now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 2012