Barry Levinson
The Bay

Forget the nostalgic "Diner," and also forget "Rain Man." It's not that kind of Levinson who directs this little cinematic surprise; rather, it's the one from "You Don't Know Jack," the TV series he directed about Dr. Kevorkian, nicknamed Doctor Death for the more than 130 assisted suicides attributed to him.

"The Bay" is a film that contains harsh criticism of various aspects of modern society: the purely entertaining side almost takes a back seat, as if "scaring" were not the true goal. We have the critique of environmental pollution (the chicken manure dumped into the waters is responsible for the epidemic we are shown), the harsh condemnation of mass media, particularly of the Western kind (the morbid and excessive presence of reporters in the contaminated city), and even a veiled but omnipresent critique of current communication systems (much material is conveyed via Skype, but almost as if telling it that way were something "immoral"). Not to mention the politics, even local politics, which in the name of a carnivorous economy, hides, corrupts, and silences. All of this is in the screenplay, written by Michael Wallach, and there's also the right amount of scares, primarily to create an unsettling atmosphere, almost like a side dish, without ever descending into tawdry teenage splatter.

Worthy of note is the editing, simply ingenious, which guides us through the streets of the city invaded by the plague as if we were watching a long special edition of some newscast. The initial part, deliberately slow and almost Hitchcockian in style, manages to create the right amount of tension which then gradually explodes as we delve into the story—a step-by-step construction that, on one hand, shows how Levinson cares more about the themes than the simple "jump scare" and, on the other hand, allows us to better grasp the story itself, the events that led to the epidemic, what happened before, the true responsibilities.

Perhaps a bit too moralistic, perhaps a bit too presumptuous, but "The Bay" remains, in any case, a valid example of both technique and storytelling. In a genre like horror, often defaced, humiliated, and created just to cash in, that's no small feat.