The Bay (film)

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, 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. 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. However, strange events begin to happen. During the July 4th festival, multiple people who were in the swimming pools are seen walking around, screaming "help me" as boils and rashes begin to form on their skin. When the crab eating contest rolls around, several of the participants begin to vomit and collapse while eating the crabs, which is witnessed by rookie reporter Donna and cameraman Jim. Meanwhile, a couple, Stephanie and Alex, are with their newborn baby and are about to boat to Claridge, though Stephanie’s mom tries to talk them out of it due to the strange events in the town and the number of people in the hospital, including Stephanie's father who has to have his leg amputated. However, the voicemail was not sent due to law enforcement shutting down the cell towers and Stephanie and Alex go anyway. Another girl uses Facetime to contact a friend, worried about a strange rash forming all over her body. After the events, footage of a teenage softball player and her boyfriend is found, showing them being attacked in the water off a dock. Their bodies were never found.

At the local hospital, the ER is overwhelmed with patients as Dr Jack Abrams witnesses the rashes spreading across patients' bodies. When calling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they can't trace the origins, believing it to be an unknown virus. Eventually, the two researchers discover that they are in fact Cymothoa exigua, parasitic isopods which prey on fish, that have seemingly evolved to affect humans as well, and that the origin was from a local polluted chicken farm's chemicals being dumped into the ocean, the existence of which had been a cause of controversy in Claridge. Meanwhile, law enforcement had received multiple calls about people screaming in pain all over town. That night, while investigating a noise complaint from neighbors, police officer Jimson goes to investigate a house, only to be heard screaming and discharging his firearm inside the house. The gunshots alert fellow officer Paul, who enters the house. In a digitally enhanced audio recording, it is revealed that Jimson came across a whole family of people that had been infected and were begging Jimson to kill them. Having been driven insane after seeing what has happened to the infected people in the house, Jimson kills his partner after euthanizing the infected residents, and later kills the sheriff after the latter happens upon the scene, then committing suicide in front of the Mayor. The Mayor promptly flees, only to be killed in a car crash. The teenage girl using FaceTime to contact her friend is the next to die, having succumbed to the isopods. As more and more people are killed off by the isopods, Dr Abrams and the CDC work to try and find a cure, to no avail. Officials at the CDC learn that the water in Claridge contained a sleuth 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. Stephanie and Alex finally arrive at Claridge by nightfall finding that most of the residents are dead and emergency services are nowhere to be seen. Alex is infected and dies, while Stephanie and her newborn baby survive. This is revealed to be because he jumped off the boat and swam in the water briefly on their way over.

Dr. Abrams is later infected, and he sends a final broadcast to the world, showing that everyone in the hospital is dead, tracing the origins of the isopods, and he is the final person left in the ER. As reported by Donna whilst she narrates the footage, Dr. Abrams died that night. The two researchers are also eaten by the isopods, and Paul's body is found by Donna and Jim. Donna reports later that Jim would also die that night. Soon after, the whole town is quarantined for three days to prevent further spreading

Years later, Donna is revealed to have been the one who leaked the footage, revealing that the government covered up the incident as the result of "unusually high water temperatures". Stephanie and her newborn baby's fate are left unknown.

• 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

The film came about as a result of a documentary Levinson was asked to produce about problems facing the Chesapeake Bay.[5] 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.[5] As such when promoting the film he noted that it's "80 percent factual information."[6]

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. [7] 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.[8]

Levinson chose to use the found footage format after thinking about the Pompeii disaster[5] 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"[6] 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.[5]

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

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.[9] 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 favourable reviews".[10] David Cox of The Guardian awarded the film 5 out of 5 stars and called it a "horror film for grown ups".[11] 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".[12]

• The Bay at IMDb
• The Bay at Rotten Tomatoes