User Reviews

Let's get this out of the way: in spite of what synopsis and trailers may (mis)lead you to believe, this is not a found-footage monster movie. So, if you wanted Paranormal Activity: the Dagon Edition, don't bother.

The Bay is a competent, unnerving ecological thriller, a disaster movie about a sea community devastated by polluted water and plague-bearing parasites.

Unlike your typical found footage flick, a veteran director (Barry Levinson) is at the helm, and it shows: it's much better filmed than the average level for the genre. The final act, with hideous overgrown parasites crawling around the deserted town, has a truly nightmarish quality to it.

7/10

So this review is for people that have seen the show. Interesting premise on the chicken sh** being dropped into the water, for the people who have posted here for a long time not that the boards are down can you use a bland curse word? Anyway, that and getting the hyper growth of the concept of the parasites and bugs, whatever, becoming what they did and the mayor ignoring it a month before because of the 4th of July and the income of the city. I get it. Enlighten teens. Besides the mayor getting what he deserved for the all mighty American $ we worship.

What ticks me off is having the ending just being it covered up and and just dropping a massive amount of chlorine and all is solved. Like none of the fish would be out of that area and spread that black bug and that many fish dead and human deaths in a American city would just be looked over in the national media.

Interesting concept yet you have to finish a logical conclusion that is believable.

I was surprised when I saw this scary movie was directed by Barry Levinson (Diner, The Natural; Good Morning, Vietnam, Rain Man), the description for it sounded good, and it was rated well by critics, so I was looking forward to whatever it had to offer. Basically the film opens explaining that the footage was confiscated by the U.S. government until an anonymous source leaked the footage for the entire world to see. On July 4th 2009, Independence Day, a seaside town in Claridge, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay, thrives on water and is ready to celebrate the annual Crab Festival. But two researchers find the water has a staggering level of toxicity, Mayor Stockman (Frank Deal) is alerted, but he refuses to take action fearing it will cause a panic, and the result is a deadly plague being unleashed. The outbreak is thought to have been caused by a combination of agricultural pesticides, random pollutants, and steroids-in-chicken-manure that have been dumped into the bay, whatever it is it has turned humans into hosts for a deadly, mutant breed of the parasite Cymothoa exigua, i.e. parasitic crustacean isopods. The creatures start infecting townspeople one by one, several stories are seen as the overwhelming chaos takes over, particularly local young inexperienced news reporter Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue) and her cameraman, who were reporting on the 4th of July festivities , she is also explaining the occurrences in an off-screen personal recording. Other stories seen include two oceanographers who first discovered the parasites, two police officers on duty investigating the residential area, a young unsuspecting couple swimming in the lake, a teenage girl sending a desperate message to a friend on FaceTime, Dr. Jack Abrams (Stephen Kunken) informing the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) of the developing situation at the local hospital, and a young married couple with an infant aboard sailing on a vessel toward the family home, unaware of the horrific unfolding events on the mainland. Also starring Will Rogers as Alex, The Cabin in the Woods' Kristen Connolly as Stephanie, Argo's Christopher Denham as Sam, Nansi Aluka as Jaquline, Kimberly Campbell as Nurse Rebecca, Beckett Clayton-Luce as Charles and Dave Hager as Fisher Jerry. The combination of "found footage" from news broadcasts, phone cameras, Skype, CCTV and webcam, accompanied by narration of the young newscaster, makes for an interesting take on the scary movie genre, you could call it a cross between Paranormal Activity and Jaws, and of course the special effects make up and little CGI to bring the isopods and their hideous body eating antic to life is fantastic, it is scary to think that isopods are real, it is well put together and definitely gives you the jitters, a terrific horror thriller. Very good!

From the get go we have a slight reference to "Blair Witch Project", and if you're tired of watching movies self recorded, you can already turn it off after five minutes or less. "The Bay" has a documentary feeling; Stephanie is a former reporter that taped everything that happened in the town when a plague or something like that came and wiped out the population. Interesting to see such horrifying injuries in the inhabitants; I felt distressed while watching the drama and pain those people were facing. The main disease reminds the audience of popular movies like "Quarentena" and 2010's "The Crazies", but for some reasons, it sometimes feels original and unique. Director Barry Levinson is able to actually SCARE the spectator with a simply story-- I jumped out of my couch in the last scenes. Also, the sad way Kristen Connolly portrays her character gives more credibility to the plot and to the movie as a whole. In the end, albeit this movie doesn't bring anything specially new to the genre, it's an interesting picture of horror to enjoy with a pinch of reality. Give it a try.

First of all, let me say that I was astonished to see that this film was made by Barry Levinson, the great director of GOOD MORNING Vietnam, BUGSY, RAIN MAN and so many more features, great ones, since the late 70's till the late 90's. Great surprise. I could not believe it. And this director was not known for making horror features, especially ones in the kind of CLOVERFIELD, BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. AS this one is. This movie that reminds me John Frankenheimer's PROPHECY, as a ecologic movie, or early features from David Cronenberg...

THis maybe cheap but astounding movie is really terrific, I was glued to my seat all long it.

I recommend it.

How can you be scared ? The Bay is anything but a horror movie. Barry Levinson totally disappointed me. This film is 100% inaccurate, both medically and on script terms.

I'm not the guy who rationalizes everything he sees. But if you mess with public environment, health or technologies available to control plagues, pollution, etc., you play with fire. The Bay is a negative example of that.

It made CDC and EPA look like morons, actually. Not to mention the awful medical behavior. There are treatments that could be tried before amputation and shotguns... I urge Barry Levinson to get a Vademecum in order to get familiar with drugs that kill parasites. They are not mentioned at all. Even later, when the parasite identificated, THEY DID NOT TREAT THEM with drugs! Unbelievable. How can you fear a 2 centimeters cockroach who is isolated, studied and should be treated as well...

One of the fear factors in a movie is when you have a situation out of control, when you ignore the cause of the plague, when you mess with a bad guy who seems unstoppable. Nothing of this happens here. Levinson tries to be seriously scary, but such thing didn't succeed. I think that if you want to be believable and threatening, you got to handle reality facts as well in order to be believable. Unnatural things can become natural if you are clever enough. I remember Contagion. Not the best movie of all times, but it had a good reality factor, and it was medically believable.

The Bay is unbelievable, absurd, and people seems to be retarded, especially those who are in charge of the situation.

I hate when directors do that. You got to study the subject a little when you are producing and filming, it's the least you can do.

Awful, boring, lacking credibility, lacking fantasy, lacking acting, lacking plot, people is portraited as idiots. And I tend to think that the guys in this film think that I'm an idiot, too. Insulting. Don't see it.

The worst movie I've seen in a long time.