Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!
When I hear that something is a “mockumentary,” I tend to think more spoof than anything else. This is Spinal Tap is a mockumentary because it’s funny. Some would call The Bay a mockumentary, except that this is not even remotely close to being funny. I would call it a fictional documentary. This is definitely a found footage film, but it’s found footage disguised as a documentary, so it’s clearly edited and is presented as using that found footage to tell a factual story.
A lot of our time is going to be spent with Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue), who was a reporter in the town of Claridge, MD, reporting on the Fourth of July celebration. Everything seems to be normal until people suddenly start getting violently ill. This includes boils and rashes that eventually prove fatal, because those boils and rashes are caused by isopods that have mutated and grown huge thanks to environmental pollution in the water off the coast. Specifically, the water is the dumping ground for waste from the local chicken farm, and the waste is laced with chemicals and growth hormones.
That seems like spoiler, but it’s evident right away that something terrible is happening, and because some of the footage that we get early in the film includes fish from Chesapeake Bay filled with isopods (known colloquially as “sea lice”). It’s not a surprise when things start going south and people start dying horribly.
This is genuinely the real horror of The Bay, or at least one of the horrors. People are infected with isopod larvae that they grow to massive sizes and literally eat them from the inside out. We’re going to get gore a-plenty here, with the caveat that a lot of it is going to be grainy or out of focus.
The other horror here, of course, is how this infestation of isopods is handled by the CDC, Homeland Security, and the government in general. While a lot of what is happening in the film feels like it could be real or at least is in the realm of possibility the fact that this is something that is clearly going to be brushed over and hidden is perhaps what sells it the most.
For a found footage film, the acting is surprisingly good. Found footage often feels amateurish, at least to me, because the people aren’t supposed to be professional actors. That’s the point, after all—these are just regular people. The cast of The Bay genuinely comes off as being terrified of what is happening to them and what is happening around them. Especially effective is Stephen Kunken who plays an overwhelmed ER doctor who does what he can to save what people he can, not really understanding what is going on and getting no real help or guidance from the CDC.
The movie that this is oddly reminiscent of is Jaws in that it takes place on the East Coast on and around the Fourth of July and features horrifying death coming from the water. It’s obviously vastly different as well, but there are moments that feel like homage.
The biggest surprise with The Bay is that this was directed by Barry Levinson, the same Barry Levinson who did The Natural and Rain Man. I would guess that at some point, it would be fun to slip into a world of low-budget filmmaking and unknown actors, opting to create a film that is a lot more visceral than an Oscar-bound drama.
I’m not going to lie—The Bay is nasty in places. There’s a lot here that feels really ick-making, and that’s very much the intent. This kind of environmental horror is (I think) going to be the next sub-genre of horror as the planet we live on starts to turn against us. The Bay wants to be a scary movie and succeeds in general. It wants to give us a few jump scares, and it does. But it definitely wants to serve as a warning for environmental disaster and government corruption, and it does that, too.
If you don’t have a strong stomach, don’t watch. There are going to be things here that upset you, and not all of them are going to be faked. Isopods are terrifying and a lot of the isopods that they show are the real thing. It’s a good reminder that we don’t actually know a lot of what is going on in the ocean, and once you’ve seen a giant isopod, you won’t want to go there.
Why to watch The Bay: It really feels like a documentary.
Why not to watch: It’s found footage, so it’s not always easy to see what is happening.
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