The Bay

As the film opens, a young TV journalist recalls a terrible July 4th a few years earlier when a waterborne parasite began to attack swimmers and other local residents. identified as isopods, the creatures have mutated into carnivores the size of big cockroaches and begin to devour their victims both from the outside in and the inside out – a nice touch, that. The reasons for the mutation are hinted: run-off from a giant chicken farm, where the poultry feed is laced with steroids, and a possible radiation leak from a nearby nuclear reactor. Barry Levinson’s THE BAY is another found-footage shocker, but with a welcome difference. instead of being cobbled together from shaky-cam footage allegedly shot by clueless teenagers, this one is built around suppressed video allegedly filmed by a professional cameraman for public access TV. it also incorporates cell phone video, skype interviews and video shot on board a boat by a young couple who have chosen the wrong day to take their baby out for a cruise. (Roger Ebert)