In 2009, college intern Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue, PITCH PERFECT) was covering the Claridge, Maryland July 4th celebration that became the site of a devastating outbreak of what at first seemed to be a flesh-eating virus. As his waiting room fills up with locals infected with boils, lesions, and blisters, a local emergency room doctor (Stephen Kunken, THE GIRL IN THE PARK) contacts the CDC. Meanwhile, the cops are responding to apparent mutilation murders, skinny-dippers and fishing boats get gruesome surprises, rumors about terrorists attacks and satanic cults poisoning the water supply are rampant, and the dissembling mayor (Frank Deal, THE BOURNE LEGACY) is blaming the higher bacterial levels that come with unseasonably warm water temperatures. The CDC, the EPA, the coast guard, and Homeland Security - in conjunction with the local hospitals - scramble to discover the cause of the outbreak; but we learn from the video diary of a pair of marine biologists whose bodies were pulled from the water two weeks before the festivities that prehistoric parasitic isopods have been found in the local fish population, however the possible causes of the virulence, speed, and nature of the outbreak are only partly explained as the result of a complex web of greed and negligence.

THE BAY is a "found footage" film in that it purports to be compiled and edited together from multiple video sources seized by the government and then leaked out in 2012 with Donna's recollections justifying the editorial interjections (as opposed to a more linear playback of the footage). There are some jumps and plenty of gruesome gore effects; but the film is more of an ecological disaster expose than a horror film, and director Barry Levinson (SLEEPERS) manages to wring some emotion out of the deaths of a few cardboard characters and many, many more extras. The combination of JAWS-esque publicity-minded local government, X-FILES-esque FBI cover-ups, ineffectual and incompetent Homeland Security and FEMA bureaucracy, and "too many cooks" in the CDC think-tank would be hokey - and indeed a late exchange between an exasperated CDC scientist (Robert C. Treveiler, THE MIST) and a Homeland Security "schlub" (Anthony Reynolds) does indeed raise a few chuckles thanks to Treveiler's timing - if not for the many real-life examples (as depicted in the news and in not-so-far-off parody). A straightforward horror film might have seemed odd in Levinson's oeuvre - discounting YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES as more of a Spielberg work and SPHERE as a dismal cash-in adaptation of a dismal novel - but THE BAY fits more alongside his WAG THE DOG and possibly MAN OF THE YEAR.