Barry Levinson's "The Bay": It's the chicken shit, stupid!

The Bay, Barry Levinson’s eco-horror production, didn’t play in many theaters, but the Strand Cinema in Georgetown, South Carolina (where most of the filming took place) had a few showings over the weekend.

Although it was interesting to see all the nearby locations, the film itself didn’t meet my expectations (which weren’t particularly high).

In The Bay, Georgetown stands in for the Chesapeake Bay town of Claridge, where Fourth of July festivities are in high gear.  There’s a blue crab eating contest, a dunk tank, and even a Miss Crustacean contest.  A novice reporter (Kether Donohue) is there to cover the action.  What unfolds is a parade of horrors, as festival-goers stagger around screaming with fast-growing red pustules.  The local hospital begins to fill up and doctors make the horrifying discovery that something is munching on the victims from the inside.
 

The premise is that the reporter puts together an exposé of the cover-up following the disaster, so the whole thing is documented with a plethora of found footage.  This is almost convincing, except for the typical horror movie soundtrack pasted over it to enhance the arthropod terror.

Yes, it’s isopods.  Flogging the eco and minimizing the horror, screenwriter Michael Wallach makes it abundantly clear that pollution, primarily from chicken farm runoff (a real problem around the Chesapeake), has made the fish parasites grow and multiply and decide humans might be tasty too.  Again and again, the audience’s collective nose is rubbed into the explanation, although why the isopods decided to strike on the Fourth or why other organisms weren’t affected by the toxic water are questions that remain unresolved.
Abundant real-life examples of the indignities suffered by the Chesapeake, from leaking nuclear plants to pharmaceuticals in wastewater, are trotted out for display.  But if Levinson wanted to send a message about environmental issues, the silliness of the isopod premise was not the way to go.
   

The biological implausibility helps deflate the public service announcement aspect of the film, and what’s left is oddly dull.  The plot is minimal (people get infected and die) and the characters are so peripheral as to be almost non-existent.

There are a few genuine, if cheap, scary moments as the infected townsfolk pop up suddenly, roll their eyes, or scream, and shots of bodies lying in the quiet streets at night inspire a momentary sense of dread, but there’s not enough horror to go around.  Somehow the squeaking, scuttling isopods aren't very menacing even when they're eating their way out of people.  The real assault on the senses is the shaky found footage camera work, which made me want to vomit harder than the folks in the blue crab eating contest.

I had hoped something more entertaining would come out of The Bay... giant crabs, perhaps?   

"Isopod" is coming... maybe not to a theater near you.

After filming in 2010 in Georgetown, South Carolina, and dropping off the radar for quite some time, Barry Levinson's "ecological horror" film "Isopod" (or "The Bay", whichever it is) is finally being released on November 2nd, following showings at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival.  However, the film, which doubtless had its genesis when a screenwriter read a news story about parasitic marine isopods, is now being distributed by Roadside Attractions, not Lionsgate, and is expected to see a limited release.

I like the picture Fangoria posted.  It looks like another typical day at Georgetown Hospital. 

The Bay has a Distributor

Barry Levinson's found footage eco-horror thriller The Bay, formerly Isopod (those are isopods in the picture - terrifying!), will be distributed by Lionsgate.  From the press release:

"The announcement was made jointly by Joe Drake, President of the Motion Picture Group, and Jason Constantine, President of Acquisitions and Co-Productions. From the producers of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise, the film is the next installment in their series following INSIDIOUS, and chronicles an unprecedented biological disaster unleashed from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay- an isopod parasite, carrying a horrific untreatable disease, that jumps from fish to human hosts. The true horror and scope of the event unfolds on footage captured on home videos and the internet by the town’s victims.
“Ingenious genre films are and always will be a specialty at Lionsgate,” explained Drake of the choice to acquire the film. “THE BAY is a shining example of the kind of truly fresh horror film that audiences are always ready for, and that we excel at eventizing with them. Thanks to Barry, we’ll all be afraid to go in the water for years to come.”"

Eventizing?

The Bay was filmed in Georgetown, South Carolina, where it has generated much excitement.  No word on a release date yet.

The Bay: Filming Wraps Up

Barry Levinson's ecological horror film The Bay, formerly Isopod, is wrapping up filming in Georgetown, South Carolina, with cast and crew expected to leave town in the next few days.  The Bay is set in the fictional Maryland town of Claridge, and we now know that the plot actually does involve parasitic isopods, which normally use fish as their hosts, taking over humans instead and causing them to run amok - essentially as zombies.

Link for a brief Georgetown Times article on the end of filming is here.

"The Bay": Filming Begins

Filming on Barry Levinson's eco-horror thriller The Bay started yesterday with a traffic jam scene on the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway in Georgetown, South Carolina.  "They said there was a monster coming out of the bay," said one witness (article here), but the exact nature of the monster(s) is still under wraps.

Today's filming was a July 4th festival scene in downtown Georgetown, with extras crab-racing and taking turns on the dunk tank.  They filmed a crab-eating competition after I left, in which one of the contestants starts puking - perhaps a harbinger of the viral horror to come.

There were Maryland flags in abundance.  Since they wanted a crowd, it was pretty much an open set with people wandering through walking their dogs and stopping to be part of a take or get some cotton candy.

I overheard some of the crew talking about the parasitic isopods that hitch a ride in fishes' mouths after eating their tongues - interesting.

"Isopod" is now "The Bay"

Slightly more information on Barry Levinson's upcoming thriller here.


Apparently it is actually an ecological horror film involving a viral outbreak in a small Maryland town.  So, the bay in question would be the Chesapeake (although they're shooting next to Winyah Bay in Georgetown, South Carolina, probably for tax purposes).

It also appears that they're using the pieced-together-footage technique of Cloverfield, etc., which can work well if it doesn’t give you motion sickness (I had to close my eyes during parts of The Blair Witch Project, and not because it was too horrific to watch).

At the audition for extras, they were specifically looking for one year old twins, amputees for a hospital scene, and expert blue crab eaters.  The latter should be easy to find around Georgetown.