The Bay



THE BAY

Director : Barry Levinson

Year : 2013

Genre : Horror

Rating : ****1/2

Despite it's torture - porn style poster and rather generic trailer, 'The Bay' is one of the most intensely paranoid and viciously urgent horror films made in a long while. Directed by Barry Levinson, most famed for his 1988 Best Picture winner 'Rain Man', 'The Bay' recalls the golden age of body horror and the work of David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Brian Yuzna and to a lesser extent, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper; all of whom combined graphic and terrifying horror with social and political commentary. The film has been marketed as a found footage movie, but calling it that is doing 'The Bay' a great disservice as Levinson actually spins the subgenre on it's head and reinvents it, much like the brilliant science fiction film 'Chronicle' did 2 years ago. Clearly a commentary on pollution and the environment, 'The Bay' is not for the squeamish and there are many scenes throughout which made my skin crawl. It is a horror film which takes it's subject matter very seriously and by the end credits, I was questioning whether what I had just watched was really fiction.

'The Bay' is set in a town on the Maryland coastline which has a large number of environmental problems. Chicken farms situated across the town dump their waste into the surrounding waters, which in turn is pumped into a desalination plant and then transported into fountains, swimming pools and peoples homes across the bay. The high levels of toxicity in the water is ignored by the mayor of the town and during the 4th of July celebrations, a deadly plague is released. A mutant parasite called Cymothoa Exigua has grown in the water and turns it's human inhabitants into hosts; eating away at their internal organs and causing them to break out in huge boils, blisters and lesions which eventually kill. Throughout the duration of 'The Bay', we are shown through home camera footage, CCTV footage and facetime and Skype multiple story strands about how individual citizens caught and dealt with the infection.

'The Bay' is Barry Levinson's first venture into horror. Best known for classics such as 'Good Morning Vietnam', 'Bugsy' and the aforementioned 'Rain Man', he is one of the most respected American directors working in cinema today. With a resume like that, I am surprised that Levinson would agree to direct a low budget gruesome horror movie with no known cast and a relatively small budget. However, the gamble paid off and 'The Bay' is to me, his best film to date. It is refreshing in these days of lazy clone horror movies which work from the same tired clichés and conventions to see a filmmaker go for broke in creating a no - nonsense terrifying shocker. With a ferocious directing style and completely believable characterisations, 'The Bay has overtaken 'American Mary' as my favourite horror movie of 2013 so far. Despite being a found footage horror movie, 'The Bay' is played with such believability, force and drive that it actually transcends what we would come to expect from this overdone sub genre.

While we are not given a huge amount of character development due to the short amount of time we spend with them, Levinson is able to create an air of intense claustrophia, dread and terror with just the right amount of gore, violence and scenes of death. We are told very early on in the film that the parasite is found in the water and as a result, Levinson shows us scenes of both the young and the old drinking and swimming in the diseased water. We even see a young mother put some water on her tiny baby's forehead. This approach that no one is spared from the plague is surprisingly daring and Levinson must be congratulated for having the courage to show us that everyone is at deadly risk. Just like 'Jaws' did in 1975, 'The Bay' shows us that it may not be safe to go into the water.

As mentioned earlier, the cast is not full of stars, celebrities and well known faces. This allows us to gravitate more towards the characters and become more involved in their singular storyline. The acting is played dead straight and every single performer in the film is pitch perfect. Even the background players take their parts seriously and this just adds to the terrifying realism of 'The Bay'. The scenes of death and pain are horribly graphic and throughout 'The Bay', we see people with half of their face eaten away, dozens of bodies covered in boils and hundreds of corpses littering the streets, reminiscent of Eli Roth's 'Cabin Fever' (just done with more vigour, less humour and better acting). The actual parasites are also shown on screen and they are suitably hideous and nightmarish. We first see them inside dead fish and the moments in which the scientists cut them to open to reveal the growing parasitic larvae inside are skin crawling, nauseating and memorable. For these reasons 'The Bay' is certainly not suitable for children or those of a nervous disposition.

Unfortunately due to poor distribution 'The Bay' fared badly at the box office, making only $30 thousand in American theatres. Hopefully however, word will soon spread about the brilliance of the film and the movie will be pushed into profit with help of good DVD and Bluray sales. I will certainly be championing it. If you are a fan of intelligent, interesting and thought provoking horror, then you should enjoy 'The Bay' immensely. It is a horror film with a deep underlying message and has really made me think about pollution and the hideous way in which we are treating our planet. It will only be a matter of time before our actions prove to have deadly consequences and to me, 'The Bay' is possibly the most realistic representation of what could happen.

You will like this if you liked : Shivers and Rabid