Comic Con Report: The Bay
Published on Oct 15, 2012
Chiller was at New York Comic Con from October 12-14 and got the scoop on Barry Levinson's new horror movie, The Bay. Make sure you don't eat anything for the few hours before seeing The Bay. The gross out factor is not for those with weak stomachs. The film centers around the Chesapeake Bay, where 44% of all aquatic life is actually dead at any given time. That already sounds super creepy, but it’s also true! Levinson and team decided to use this disturbing fact to make a disturbing (in a good way) film. In the movie, isopods (which are a really gross kind of crustacean. Like, think of a really ugly bug) infect the bay's fish (and eventually, the surrounding town's citizens). The film is told through quite a few different points of view with one narrator.
The clip we were shown was…gross! The film was shot on over 100 different consumer digital cameras (iPhones, webcams, etc), so it has a found footage realness about it. We also saw a clip of an actress who breaks out in a rash (which was way, way disgusting). The moderator, Chris Hardwick joked that if he gets a tiny hive he goes the ER, so if what we were shown in the clip inflected him, he’d panic to death.
One powerful question the film poses is whether human pollution, not forces beyond our control, is the reason for the citizens of The Bay getting infected. Levinson said yes. He wants the film to inspire conversation about the Chesapeake and how we can prevent further pollution of our environment. The clips lead us to wonder if the film might have a touch of zombie horror to it, but Levinson clarified that once the isopods are ingested they do not turn humans into the undead. They simply eat all living things from the inside out until death mercifully takes them. Levinson went on to explain that since isopods and the science behind the movie is real, combined with new storytelling techniques thanks to digital innovations, he thought it would be interesting subject matter to attack.
The Bay opens in limited release on November 2nd.
