Movie The Only Horror by Barry Levinson Which Movie Is A Strange Idea

Barry Levinson is not a name one would normally associate with the horror genre. Academy Award winning director – best known for “Rain Man,” “Wag the Dog,” and “Diner” – has leaned mostly towards satirical comedies or a tense drama-thriller throughout his career. While preparing for a documentary about the pollution plaguing the Chesapeake Bay in 2012, Levinson decided to abandon the project in favor of a found footage eco-horror that would mix fact with fiction to disturbing effect. This effort was “The Bay,” a mock exploration of an infection premise that feels almost familiar. within the context of our post-pandemic world. Although it’s the director’s only foray into horror, Levinson reinvigorates the found footage subgenre by injecting it with one of the most primal fears that accompany a pandemic: the callous brutality of willful inaction.

It is worth noting that Levinson incorporated the scientific research for the abandoned Chesapeake documentary into the film’s narrative framework, and crafted an air of credibility by shooting a portion of the film with commonly used digital cameras. In an interview with Mother JonesLevinson explained how he had to use unconventional filmmaking to do justice to the inner workings of the found footage genre:

“We made this film for $2 million, we shot it in 18 days with a small crew using many first-time actors, and using 21 different types of video cameras, including iPhones and inexpensive underwater video gear, to make them seem believable. This led to more complex editing. Everything had to be plotted and done in one picture.”

The mix of fact based on reality and inspired fiction helped create something truly terrifying, prompting a delicate suspension of disbelief that is perhaps one of “The Bay’s” greatest strengths. Although not perfect, this neglected horror entry must be scrutinized for its uncompromising vision, along with its brutality and gruesomeness that brings an uncomfortably semi-real undertone to the surface.

In Levinson’s 2012 film, journalism intern Donna (Kether Donohue) is assigned to cover the Fourth of July celebration in Claridge, a quaint small town in Maryland that thrives on its water supply. Trouble brews when a local chicken farm is discovered dumping toxins that end up polluting the Chesapeake Bay, and this snowballs into the townspeople becoming ill and exhibiting worrisome physical symptoms. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is contacted once the situation gets out of control, but a mixture of indifference and inaction makes things much worse. Bodies of dead fish wash up on the shore, infected people begin to drop dead after excruciating in unimaginable pain, and dead birds begin to litter the bloody streets. Donna and her camera person witness these events firsthand, torn between them documents the horrors of the disaster in real time and complete helplessness when faced with the strange symptoms among the infected.

Not everything that happens on screen feels new or unique, but Levinson is able to use some well-trodden tropes to build tension in a situation that has no silver lining. Donna’s footage, which is later seized by the government and then leaked by a third party, is interspersed with frantic Skype calls, cell phone videos, and digital vlogs that capture the visual nature of an epidemic not checked. The physical horrors of pus-filled rashes, violent vomiting, and exploding intestines add to the heightened narrative, with a couple of mutated creatures thrown in for good measure. No one knows what to do, and those in a position to do something, like the town’s mayor Stockman (Frank Deal), seem more troubled by the prospect of Claridge losing tourists .

What I appreciate about “The Bay” is that it puts ecological horror at the fore, and highlights our contempt for the environment even when our transgressions pollute the sanctity of life. There is more to this story than the scorn it inspires, as we are forced to grapple with the evidence left behind by the countless mini-vlogs and distressed digital calls that analyze the nature of the causes of mutation. The shameful display of callous indifference that accompanies this disaster—during and after—is not pretty, and Levinson deliberately ends “The Bay” on this bitter, disturbing note.