The Bay

The Bay

the bay still

Barry Levinson’s eco-thriller from 2012 is remarkably prescient and just as applicable to the situation we find ourselves in today. That makes the horror even scarier.

We’re fans of the “found footage” conceit, and this faux-documentary gives a slightly different spin on the genre.

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The Bay (2012)

Episode 269, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week, Craig, I believe you chose the movie. 

Craig: yeah, randomly in the summertime. My sleep schedule gets all screwed up because I’m not working. And so a lot of times I do a good amount of sleeping during the day, which then leads me to be up all night. And I was just scanning through.

The various streaming services that, uh, I have, and I was, uh, going through HBO max and this movie came up The Bay from 2012. And actually I had seen this movie before, but, you know, I was, I was just putting it on to like have on while I was laying down. And if I went to sleep. Fine cause I’ve seen it, but I ended up watching the whole thing and I thought it would be interesting to talk about.

I think it’ll be weird to talk about because it’s different than the kind of movies we usually do. I mean, there, there is a narrative, there is a story, but. Really aren’t any, I mean, there are some characters, um, that appear more than others, but it’s not really super focused on any one character or a small group of characters.

Um, it’s, it’s set up like a documentary. I mean, it is a photo documentary. Um, it actually feels pretty real in the way that it’s put together. I think if you just stumbled upon this and you didn’t know that it was. A feature film, as opposed to an actual documentary, you could easily be fooled, but, uh, just because of the way that it’s set up, I don’t know.

I feel like it’s going to be kind of weird to talk about, but you know, we’ll, we’ll see what we can do. 

Todd: It’s interesting because, uh, the movie was, was not fantastically received. I guess people, lot of people liked it. Some people didn’t, uh, I think it has like a 7,600. Ray approval rating on rotten tomatoes.

You know, I went and I read Roger Ebert’s review of it because, you know, I like to do that. And I thought, I thought what he had to say was quite unfair. Actually. He said, eh, it’s less of a horror movie and more of like an eco. Thriller or whatever. And I’m like, yeah, that’s a horror movie. Like great. We do a lot of eco thriller horror movies.

Like we did Gator, you know, and jaws. And there are a ton of horror movies that, uh, involve the natural world kind of going out of control. I think one of the freakiest ones we had seen up to this point was the beach. Was that what it was called? Beach, the beach 

Craig: house, maybe. 

Todd: Yeah, that was it. And that’s like nightmarish and sometimes it’s, it’s even more nightmarish really than the Freddy Krueger jumping out at you.

Cause you ultimately know that’s not real. Whereas a movie like this puts things in a context and gives a lot of, um, I mean, I feel like this could happen, you know, and especially since we’re going through a pandemic, right. This is just the kind of movie, you know, the sort of eco disaster we’re living an eco disaster horror movie in some ways.

And so that makes us move even more unsettling because it’s, it’s just a little closer to home than probably it felt like in the year, 2012. So I don’t see that as a criticism at all. I was pretty much scratching my head at that being criticism of this movie. Like you said, it is a photo documentary. It is it’s I mean, found.

Not really, I, it is sort of a found footage movie, but like you said, it’s, it’s more of a, a documentary that was pieced together out of footage, like a news reporter or a documentarian would do. And that’s the conceit of the movie. There is a woman and her name is Donna, right? Yeah. And she is basically a journalist in this.

Or was yeah, was 

Craig: the events of the movie supposedly took place in 2009, but she is doing this interview. Um, I guess what would amount to an expos a several years later, but the, the, the, the events that transpired were so traumatic to her that she. Quit journalism altogether. And this is the first time that she’s talked about it.

And, and according to her, and according to whoever it is behind this documentary, these events have never been. Reported on before, which once you see what has happened, you would think, how could we not know about this? You know, um, how could this go unreported? But with all the conspiracy theories that are constantly flying around in the world today, you almost just don’t know what to believe.

I, you know, my willing suspension of disbelief was, you know, Yeah, it’s something I’ve covered this up. I don’t know 

Todd: exactly, exactly what you mean anymore. You just throw your hands in the air and go, oh, okay. I’ll go along with it. It’s true though. In some ways the movie is a little bit ahead of its time.

Isn’t it? This is the kind of thing you would see amateur. Well, you do see. And mature documentarians throwing together up on YouTube. 

Craig: Well, and on podcasts, I feel like, oh, you know, obviously this doesn’t take. Route, but there are so many podcasts out there now about unexplained phenomenon, conspiracy theories, and whatnot.

This seems like exactly the kind of thing that you would find on one of those podcasts. But yeah. Um, it, it works. I mean, I honestly, like I said, it feels very much like a documentary. I didn’t recognize any of them. I don’t think so. You’re. Pulled out, you know, it’s not like, oh, this is supposed to be a documentary, but Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts are in it.

So obviously it’s not, you know what I mean? Like these, these aren’t familiar faces. These could be real people. Everything feels very natural. And even the horrors that ecological horror is that, um, are present here. Do not seem farfetched at all.

Todd: And we said the same thing, I think about the beach house. Didn’t we, and I think the conceit of that was that, uh, it was down in the bottom of the ocean, some events that, you know, those there’s constant volcanic activity happening beneath the ocean and all kinds of creatures were learning. Right? Yeah.

That can survive in super, super hot environments, um, that were kind of unknown and something kind of like there’s a little, a little earthquake or something, and that just sort of breaks apart and releases some kind of bacteria or something into the water. Uh, in this case, as the movie goes along, we’re led to believe that it’s a manmade.

Again, it’s like a warning, right? Oh, we’ve we’ve, we’ve let the waters get too dirty. We’ve covered things up. We’ve dumped a, to toxic waste into the water kind of thing. Runoff from the, I think as a nuclear power plant runoff down the way I’m 

Craig: not here. Well, I mean, you know, that’s, that’s very typical in these types of movies, but even that, I mean, Of course, you know, uh, during the nuclear crisis, there were lots of, lots of these, right?

Lots of those types of movies, but this is, this hits very much closer to home because not that we don’t have nuclear facilities, we do. But, um, this actually is just it’s uh, like a fish plant or no chickens, chickens. Yeah. It’s like a FA a chicken factory farm. And, um, all of the waste from these chickens is just, you know, piled up near the waters of the Chesapeake bay and not only.

Is that dangerous in itself because you know, you get a lot of waste material and your water that’s dangerous, but also these chickens are treated with growth hormones and various other hormones. So that is in their waste as well. And that’s what ends up getting in the water and causes. This problem. And the reason that I say the reason that I say that it hits close to home is because I live in the Midwest in the states.

And, um, we have very, very near where I live. I live in Missouri and this, and in Iowa, right directly above us, they have these enormous. Hog FA factories. These, these factory farms were just thousands upon thousands of hogs are kept in relatively small spaces and enclosures. Um, and of course they produce a lot of waste and that waste has to be processed in some ways.

And there’s a lot of concern about the environmental impact of that. Um, so this is something. That I have, I have seen in the news and something that is a real concern. So when you see it here, yeah. I believe this. I believe that corporate industry has less concern about. The impact of their practices, then maybe they should.

And when you live in a capitalist country, a society money makes the world go round and corners are cut. And, you know, even legislation like in this, they talk about how. There are certain levels of waste and hormone that are permissible, as long as they stay just below that level of a permissible, whatever, then they get away with it.

Uh, and, and I really think that not maybe something as dramatic as what happens here, but I think. Probably have been and certainly could be some pretty serious consequences to all of 

Todd: that. Well, and that, um, you know, is, is exactly what led Barry Levinson, who is the director of this film, uh, to make the movie, he was originally approached to make a Dr.

Uh, he’s from Maryland. And so the Chesapeake bay is quite close to his home. And so he had a little bit of a personal attachment to this area and he was approached to do a documentary about the problems facing Chesapeake bay, because it does really have issues, pollution and the water and, um, fish dying off and the fishing being difficult there, but he kind of learned that frontline had already done a thing on it and he was sorta like, you know, nobody’s gonna get.

Nobody’s really going to care, but maybe I could make them care. If I made a bit of entertainment out of it. If I actually took the same content. And he claims, you know, 80% factual information in this movie, obviously not the events that went down, but a lot of the facts in this movie about the bay and a lot of the facts about nature and things like that.

And even like you said, the facts that we do. These problems of corporations and animal waste and, and stuff not being properly dealt with all of that is quite factual. Uh, but then he put it together into this, you know, story that isn’t quite as fantastical as it, as we wish it were. And, and this way it it’s an interesting method of ad.

Advocacy advocacy, advocacy, advocacy, and activism. It’s an interesting way to activate people, right. Is give them this horror, but it it’s, it’s kind of real. It can be real. And, uh, I don’t know, like I said, I it’s so odd to me that people criticized the movie as that way. I don’t know if it’s the same sort of people that just don’t like being preached to, or, you know, we’re just hypersensitive to two messages being in their movies or whatever.

Definitely a message here in this film. And we, it’s not the first time. It’s not even the first time we’ve dealt with this. Didn’t even an alligator, right? Wasn’t that about? They were experimenting on dogs and growth hormones and things. Those dogs got dumped into the sewer. And then the alligator pet that got loose was eating the dogs.

And that was the deal. So it’s certainly none of it’s terribly original in that regard, but the presentation is fantastic. It also, I think what really makes it horrifying to me, and this is how you kind of sold me on the film in the beginning, as you were like, You remember the memes going around about that louse that like basically enters a fish through its gills, eats away its tongue and then attaches itself to its tog.

And it’s basically becomes a fish tongue and I’m like, oh God. Yeah. That’s like the most disgusting thing. Horrifying real life thing that apparently just is a fact of life and nature. 

Craig: It’s a real thing. And I don’t remember what drew my attention to it initially, but yeah. Seeing, I mean, you see these images of fish with its mouth open and just this little alien looking creature, just nested in its mouth.

And these are real things there, I suppose, I suppose, are apparently, you know, Prolific and real and, and, you know, they, they exist in nature in this ancient. Yeah. And this, this particular one, uh, I, I have no idea if I’m pronouncing this correctly, but say Mota exigua or, or something like that, um, which they talk about in the.

Movie and they show the Wikipedia page, which I’m looking at right now. Um, it’s a real, it’s a real thing. It’s a tongue eating Laos. It’s a, a parasitic, I suppose. And the females attack, they get into a fish and the females attack. Themselves to the fishes tongue, eat the tongue and then implant themselves and basically become the fishes tongue.

And then they can continue to get food from whatever the fish eats. And they also eat, like, I don’t know, secretions from the fish and stuff. The females are bigger and they attach to the tongue, the male. Are smaller and attached to the gills, uh, behind the tongue and in nature. Now they are largely harmless.

You know, these, these fish can go on living with these other organisms in them. If they get hungry enough, they can begin to eat the fish from. Inside, but I don’t think that that’s what they commonly do. Um, when the fish dies, they will eat it, uh, as much as they want. And then they’ll exit and look for another host.

Um, but it’s just the real thing go to the Wikipedia page or just Google it, you know, go fish ice, a pot or whatever. And it looks like a night. But it’s real. And so and so to take, so to take something like that, that really does exist and they don’t even have to change it very much. All they say is, um, because of all of this growth hormone that’s being released into the Chesapeake bay, um, these things have started to grow, uh, and they’ve become more aggressive, which also is a side effect of.

Growth hormone in animals, whether it be livestock or whatever it is, animals that are given growth hormone do get larger, um, and often become more aggressive. So it, it, it. You don’t have to stretch your imagination to believe that this could have 

Todd: well, and one of the things that said in the movie, and then I was like, no way was there talking, I think it’s, the CDC is giving a little report once they kind of figure out what this is.

And somebody says that these things are known to grow large and they can be large. And they show this picture of this one that looks like a foot long. And I’m like, okay, that’s that? Can’t be true. And then I Googled it and yeah, these things come in all shapes and all sizes really. And, uh, Without the growth hormones in nature, these things can get big freaky as hell, just, just freaky as hell.

So it adds a little bit of, um, extra creepiness to the mood he wouldn’t eat when you can Google it afterwards and go, oh my God, it’s right. You know, like all this stuff can really happen. Well, 

Craig: and the other thing, and it’s freaky about it is the movie opens up with news footage of, um, Dead fish floating and bodies of water in mass.

And it talks about like unexplained phenomenon of all of these fish dying and not just fish, but birds and these things do happen. Um, in fact, um, they say somewhere in the movie that the. Chesapeake bay is something like 75% or 80% dead. Much of the fish population has been killed off because of, uh, pollution and whatnot.

And that’s true. I don’t know. I couldn’t really find out, but it is. A lot of the news footage that they show looks very real. And I suspect that it probably is because these things do happen. And, uh, you know, the, the movie says, scientists don’t know what killed them. That, you know, in many cases that may be the case.

And sometimes they figure it out, whatever. Uh, but, uh, Donna is doing this interview and she talks about how she was a communications major and she was covering the July 4th celebration. In Claridge, Maryland, which I think is a fictional town, a beachfront town on, on the Chesapeake bay and the juxtaposition of the horrors of what.

We have what man or mankind, um, is doing to nature. It’s juxtaposed against the beauty of the nature, because the bay is just absolutely gorgeous. Like I want to move there and live there. 

Todd: Like we’ve got a ton of fun, right? Like the wind surfing and they’re having there. And I mean, didn’t this hit a little close to home, like this community.

Reminded me a lot of, um, of our small town community, where they’ve got their cute little local traditions and they’ve got their crabby eating contest and whatever, and it, even though it’s on the east coast, you can tell this as a bit of a smaller town city feel to it in their traditions. And in the way people act towards each other, they’ve got, you know, games going on, dunking booth and all that stuff.

And, uh, and this woman who is a communications major is working on. Obviously small market, local news station sent out to just cover these fluff bits of this celebration while she’s also being a little critical of the mayor, giving us a little bit of foreshadowing and saying that, you know, he seems real nice.

He’s real kind. And he was elected this, that and the other. And you could sit down with him outside. She has a little interview with him, like in front of a coffee shop, just sitting on the street, you know, very, very small. All of this stuff was, um, but then she says, but you know, later what I realized is implication in all of this and his corporate data was complacent for what would happen.

And so that there’s, you know, there’s a little bit of foreshadowing going on right from the beginning. And then we have these sort of different narrative threads going on while there’s that she’s also giving us information and showing footage of a, I think it’s Stephanie and Alex, they’re a couple who are sailing to Claridge with their, they have a newborn baby with their baby out there.

I mean, you start seeing this stuff and you’re like, oh God, well, the only reason we’re seeing. Stuff has, because it’s going to somehow end in disaster, threw a baby in there and you’re just like, oh, okay. Is it, is the movie going to go there? I remember those one of my first thoughts when I was seeing this bit.

And then there are two researchers, uh, who were, uh, going out there as well. Uh, Jacquelyn and Sam, 

Craig: I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They’re they’re scientists. And they actually, all of the stuff with the scientists is actually flashbacks because it had happened weeks prior. Right. Right. But they, they were exploring, you know, why are these, I don’t know what they were studying the fish.

Um, and they were collecting fish and studying them and they started finding. These ice pods in the fish, which again is not unusual. It is a natural occurrence. Um, but all these fish are dying and this is all broken up into short clips. So you’ll see a little bit of one person’s story and then it’ll cut back to somebody else’s.

So the whole scientist thing is spread out over a while, but what happens is. They notice that the ISO pods are larger than they normally are. Um, they seem to be bright more numerous, um, and, and they are, uh, killing the fish and eating the fish from the inside out, which is uncommon. Um, and so they want to explore further and eventually.

They just, and it’s funny because they’re filming all of this themselves, and they’re trying to make it like as professional as possible, which is kind of funny. The guy is super concerned about like angles and, but eventually they go down to explore, um, and through, yeah. Point of view their cameras. We see that they are attacked, um, aggressively.

That 

Todd: was nuts there I’ll I will say this movie for being just more or less a documentary still has horror roots. There were some serious jump scares in this. I jumped three or four times. You know, if you can get me to jump three or four times during a horror movie nowadays, you’re doing pretty well. And, uh, that scene where they’re diving down there and the camera just kind of like whips towards him and suddenly one of these Eissa pods, it just goes for his eye.

Right. I don’t know if this even makes sense really, but it shoots through the water straight to it, into his, um, what’s it. What’s that called? The thing you, wherever your eyes, God. And just like that. And I was like, oh my God, that’s horrifying. As a scuba diver. Uh, you, you want it, you want to make a horror movie, you know, setting it in the water is, is perfect because that is a nightmarish land of the unknown for us still.

And it’s right beneath our feet. We have really still scratched the surface of what’s down there. And so whenever I have gone diving, it always feels exciting and a little dangerous, you know, not just being underwater, but just like what kind of crazy weird ass things could be right around the corner.

You know, that you don’t know about and that all these different kinds of fish sharks things that’s, what’s so thrilling about doing that. So, uh, it’s totally within the realm of possibility that you’re going to encounter something pretty freaky. All of a sudden when you’re diving under the water 

Craig: and.

Yeah. I mean, there’s that I, I enjoy swimming in the ocean. I’ve never, um, dove, uh, and I don’t know that I ever would. It, it scares me a little bit, but I very much enjoy the water, but that’s something else, you know, as, as unknown, you know, it’s almost like space basically. Um, it’s treacherous, it’s unknown.

That’s scary. But the other scary thing is we’re seeing all of this footage, fun, like festival festivities. Footage of this small town, like you said, it is a very small community, but it’s also a tourist community. So there’s a lot of people there there’s a lot of stuff going on, but the filmmaker, uh, the director Levinson makes a point of showing how much of these festivities and just life in general center around water.

If there’s something wrong with the water. Like you really? Yeah. You can’t escape that. I mean, you see people swimming and skiing and like you mentioned, there’s a dunking booth and just people, you know, Yeah, splashing their faces, drinking water, kids, jumping in sprinklers, you know, just water, water, everywhere,

which makes perfect sense. It’s very much an everyday part. Uh, American life in the summertime. Uh, we, we flock to destinations specifically for water and what happens, you know, the, the first signs that something is wrong, our people start getting these rashes on their skin and the first nightmarish. And I think that it was.

To do this. They, instead of just like, you know, oh, a couple people have a little something itchy on their skin that does happen, but not before we see this larger woman who we had seen in the dunking booth, she had been dunked in the dunking booth. We see her ambling down the street, crying out for help crying for her husband.

And she is just covered head to toe. Horrible rash and these boils, um, and of course everybody’s freaked out and I think they eventually get her to a hospital, but then this starts happening more and more. And eventually the ER, you know, has eight cases and then 15 cases and then 30 cases. And, and just, um, and, and on some people, the effects, the makeup is disgusting and it looks.

Real enough to me. And, uh, you know, just these people going to the doctor and saying, you know, I’ve got this, something on my back and they lift up their shirt and it’s just, you know, it looks like worse than like third degree burns. Like it’s just, it’s so nasty. Um, And as it, and then as it starts to affect more and more people, you realize that they’re in big trouble and the doctor, the ER, doctor in this small town, like he’s like the one, ER, doctor in the small town he’s completely overwhelmed.

Um, and he can’t figure out what it is. So he contacts the CDC and the CDC is absolutely shocked to find that it’s affecting so many people. They say. Some, you know, things like this have happened before and we’ve lost, you know, Eight or nine people or whatever. And they’re like, how many people do you have?

And he’s like a 120, like in there, the CDC has no idea. And so that’s what we continue to see the interactions between this poor doctor and the CDC who really don’t know what’s going on. They’re trying to figure out eventually they, they kind of do, but it’s these it’s it’s, it’s the I supplies. 

Todd: Yeah, they’re getting into people and they’re eating their way out.

They start 

Craig: finding bodies. Um, the first body they find is just along the side of the street and it has holes in it. And they had found, I think they had found the divers that the, um, the scientists, uh, and they, they couldn’t explain. Their wounds, but they said, well, sometimes sharks get up in here, even though it doesn’t really look like shark bites, that’s the best thing they could come up with.

So they’re not sure. Well, now these things are happening on land. And at first they think it’s maybe gunshot wounds. They think they’re looking for a killer, but then it just starts happening more and more until eventually. I mean, it’s just pandemonium. 

Todd: And some really interesting things happen. Um, at some point in here, the oceanographers do, I think go to a city council meeting, they show footage from that again.

Well, before this stuff happened, uh, and, uh, the mayor is just downplays it there. They raised some concerns. He says, no, no, it’s fine. And they just opened up a new desalinization plant down the way to make sure the water is safe. And even, uh, you know, later at the. When he’s giving us speech at the event, you know, that kind of big where all the star kind of starts beginning.

He even makes some reference to the water, being clean and do people say this is a problem. And, uh, this is the best damn water I’ve ever had in my life. And he takes a sip from it. So you get a little bit of that, you know, corporate green. Uh, the mayor’s kind of not, not knowingly, presumably in on, it’s not like they knew this was happening, but just neglect, you know, and ignorance and ignoring it because it’s politically expedient to do so.

And so it does follow the mayor around a little bit, as things go crazy with the town. He goes in a car with the policeman when they’re, um, answering a call out somewhere. And it’s, there’s this family, I guess, who, you know, has been crying for her. And one of the officers goes inside while we just see the footage from inside the police car and we hear the audio and it’s like, this family is basically just begging to be killed and the officer comes out and he’s been bitten by them.

And you can see him walking almost zombie. You know, towards the car and he’s got some problems with him, he’s face or whatever is messed up. And the other officer inside the car jumps out. And I don’t know, man, it just touches so many nerves because nowadays, and I don’t remember if this was true 10 years ago, probably wasn’t as true as it is now.

Nowadays we’re even watching disasters. Unfold through body cameras and police car cameras. And we see these terrible scenes of people getting police, getting shot and killed, or, you know, people getting killed by the police. And so it just taps a nerve every single time. And wouldn’t, you know, it right here in this fricking movie, you know, is the same damn thing.

It’s a dash cam footage of this cop stumbling out of this house and he’s not. And his partner pops out of the car and runs towards him and is like, Hey man, Hey man, like what’s going on? Like get in the car. Uh, you see Manuel. And the cop pulls his gun out and aims it at him. Yeah. 

Craig: I mean, you combined a couple of scenes there.

It’s, it’s actually not as partner that he shoots when, when the chief of police or something, but the, the, the two guys, the two cops who are buddies, you know, it says that one of them had been best man. And the other one’s wedding. They establish that. That’s another thing that I liked that they do about this movie is they establish the humanity of the characters.

We don’t get to know them well, but they seem like real people. And so when the one partner goes into the house and you hear, they enhance the audio so that you can hear what’s going on, I guess the audio from his body cam, I don’t know. But they enhance the audio and you hear these people like moaning and groaning and begging to be killed.

And then you hear gunshots and then his, and then the partner goes in and he’s like, what are you doing? And, and they see what’s happening. In fact, you can even like hear the scuttling of the ISO pods and stuff, and you hear one of them say, it’s on me, it’s on my leg. And, um, later the mayor and the chief of police.

Driving around, you know, just to see what’s going on. Cause things have gotten so crazy and they come across the cop car and presumably, presumably one of the police guys is already dead, but one of them comes stumbling out. And like you said, he’s clearly already a mess. He’s clearly infested with these things and he shoots the chief of police before turning his gun.

On himself. And the mayor takes the cop car and drives away and wrecks it. And there’s, we see a lot of this, you know, like a crawl or, or, um, words that tell us what’s happening. And they say the mayor died of his injuries. He likely would have survived, but there were no ambulances or medical services available.

The whole town is in chaos, which you know, is, um, kind of karma for him because like you said, it’s not like he set out to do this. It’s not like he understood the severity of the consequences. Um, but he was complicit in. Allowing this to happen. 

Todd: It’s so COVID man. God, 

Craig: I, yeah, it very much is. And, and you know, when it first starts the mayor ability to broadcast, she’s still recording, but, uh, she can’t live stream at her live broadcast or whatever.

So trying to keep it contained and the Mary even goes on the radio and he’s like, look, you know, Sometimes when it’s especially hot as it is right now, bacteria levels in the water fluctuate and sometimes they become high. And, um, he says, so if you’re somebody who’s particularly sensitive, then maybe you would consider limiting the amount of time you spend in the water or maybe stay away from the water for a little bit.

And you know, when something big and scary, like this happens, that’s exactly how it starts. Stay calm. It’s okay. Yeah, there’s something going on, but you’re probably going to be fine. I mean, until you’re not until it just blows up and then yes. Yeah, you’re right. It’s frightening in 20 20, 20, 21. Um, because we’ve witnessed it over the past couple of years.

Todd: Yeah. At least we didn’t have things eating us from the inside out. 

Craig: Well,

Todd: well, it could always be worse. I’m trying to find a positive spin on this, Greg. Come on. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that the positive thing about it is that, um, I am somebody who’s relatively environmentally conscious, like I’m aware of. These problems. And I try not to actively contribute, you know, my partner and I share one car and, and we recycle and, you know, we try to do those little everyday things that you can do.

Um, I’m sure that we could do more, but I’m conscious of it and, and, and wary of it. But I think that even for somebody like me and maybe for others, I don’t know, this is. A fair warning. You know, nature is fragile. And if we continue to do things that are actively harming our own environment, our own planet, our own home, eventually we are going to have.

Face the music. And I think that this does, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s exaggerated and then it happens over a couple of days. But, 

Todd: uh, I think that the movie does a really good job of maintaining interest just by giving us a lot of different perspectives, a lot of different narratives and a lot of different stories to follow.

It really does unfold like a very well done documentary and. You know, one of those narratives, again, it’s this very human story of this couple with their baby. Who’s coming back home to visit relatives and is completely unaware of what’s going on. Cause they’re on a boat. And uh, they get a little worried because they’re trying to sell phones and they’re not getting any signal.

They’re not getting through to their, to their relatives. But you know, they land, I think it’s about evening time. It’s nighttime when they land and things are just dead. They’re like, wait a second. Like this is the holiday. This place should be hopping and that’s terrifying and they step off and they’re with their kid.

And there are moments there when they’re there with their kid and you’re just like, oh my God, what’s going to happen to this baby. You know, they come across some dead bodies. He has been 

Craig: swimming the cell. Yeah. I mean, I think she either, you know, playfully pushed him into the water. He sell on the water.

I mean, you know, it’s, it’s playful and he’s not, you know, he swims around for a little bit or whatever. I also thought that the. Usually in a situation like this, especially they’re a young married couple, and they’ve got, like you said, a newborn that they’re carrying around in like a Punkin seat or whatever.

And first of all, you know, like you said, the town is, the town is dead, but yeah, when, when they start to see the dead bodies, my immediate thought was get out, like, why would you stay. They casually mention it like the husband. Cause I think she says that I think she says, let’s get back on the boat or something.

He’s like, what, what do you want to do? You know, we get back on the boat and launch with no gas. Okay. I buy that, you know, if it were, if it were me, maybe I would look for the shoreside gas station and just steal some gas. I don’t know. But. It kind of made sense. There’s still a little 

Todd: ignorant as to what’s going on though.

Right? Like they don’t know how far it goes, how much it reaches then it’s not really, until they wander into the town that they realize, like everything is dead right there, dead bodies in the streets. At that point, I would have been like, yeah, get the hell out. Like if they’re dead bodies, literally in the streets and they end up in.

In like an antique store, right. That happens to be open it’s shortly after they arrive at that antique store. And we are seeing footage. I think it’s through like the security cameras right at the antique store. And he’s suddenly going kind of nuts because these things are inside of him and they’re starting to crawl out and.

Grabs. It’s very horror movie, you know, where he’s freaking out, she’s freaking out and he grabs it like a poker from the fireplace and he’s asking her to end it. Am I right? Cause he basically saying, kill me, cut it out 

Craig: or something. He was saying, kill me. That was awful. It was, 

Todd: I mean, he wouldn’t even know what’s going on.

Right. I mean, he could just be violently sick. 

Craig: Well, but you can see, and I have to say the effects. This is a gory movie and the effects look really good. I mean, if I remember correctly, you can see something actively trying to burrow its way out of his neck. I think at one point 

Todd: yet it does borrow out of his neck and it’s coming straight out.

That’s the end of it. Right. That’s what. Does she ended up killing him? I 

Craig: honestly don’t remember. It’s been like two or three weeks. Yeah. 

Todd: She either. I, don’t not sure if she ends up killing him, but that was a really touching scene. Just because, again, as you said earlier, like life is fragile and one minute you’re on a boat with your newborn, you know, going to SU to visit your family and not hours later, suddenly one of you has something burrowing out of his skin and his.

I, I, that really, that really pulled at my heart strings. And that’s toward the end of the movie. I 

Craig: mean, that’s near the very end. 

Todd: Yeah. And the movie was engaging to me from up to the very end, really, uh, well, and the other, because of these things, because of those rides. And the humanity 

Craig: of it. Yeah. That’s exactly what I was going to say.

Like you said, that is near the very end, but there are also other people that we follow. One of them is like a teenage girl. I would guess 15 maybe. And she is FaceTiming with a friend in another town, um, and, and basically documenting her own. She, she has it. She has the rash and it starts out very small and she’s concerned, but then she makes her way to the hospital and we just get maybe a minute or two of her FaceTiming with her friend, but we see the progress, you know, at first on her, it’s just a little bit of a rash.

It’s disgusting, but it’s just on one. Part of her body, but eventually she makes her way to the hospital. When she gets to the hospital, there are quite a few people there, but then later when we check in with her again, and her own symptoms had progressed. I mean, the hospital is just teaming with patients.

The, the staff is overwhelmed. Um, much of the staff has fled eventually. The doctor’s the only one who stays and the CDC tells him that he should leave. And he’s like, are you kidding me? He’s like, are you kidding me? I’ve got like 130 people here. Who are dying, I’m just supposed to leave. And they’re like, yeah, you really should.

The CDC is like, it’s a miracle that you haven’t been infected yet. And he’s like, no, I’m fine. And then, you know, there’s just one scene where, um, this young teenage couple, you know, just fooling around, like out, hanging out in the afternoon or whatever, but they’ve got with them, uh, camp. Or, I dunno, maybe even just their phones or whatever, and they’re, they’re videoing each other.

It’s flirty, it’s cute. She, uh, jumps in the water and, and, uh, he says something like, no, I’ll just let the jellyfish sting you. And she says, oh, and he thinks she’s kidding. But then she starts the waters kind of start to roll and, and she’s. Yeah. And she’s being attacked. And I think he falls in and it says that, uh, they found.

The camera weeks and weeks later, but their bodies were never recovered. And so it’s just, you know, these little mundane scenes of everyday people in their everyday lives dealing with this strange phenomenon. And it’s also somewhat realistic in that it doesn’t affect. Everybody, you know, some people, whether it be because they weren’t exposed to the water or they were just lucky, I don’t know, but it’s not affecting everybody.

It’s affecting a lot of people. At one point, we hear a voice message. Um, from the young married couple, her it’s her parents that they’re going to see, and we hear a voice message from her mother to her that she never got. And it said she, you know, her mom’s like something strange is happening. Your father, uh, has some sort of rash or something they’re afraid of.

To amputate his leg. Lots of people have it. I think I may have it too. And she says, you know, we just want you to know that we love you and whatever happens don’t get off the boat, but she never, but she never got the message. Just, just the realism of hearing. A voicemail and it sounds very heartfelt and, and true to life, I think makes it just it’s scarier.

You know, for me, for me, I love all types of horror movies. I love monster movies and scifi and all that kind of stuff, but some of the scariest movies are so scared of. Because you believe they really could happen. Um, and you believe that they really could happen to normal people like you, like your friends and family.

And to see it portrayed in that way is potentially more impactful on a scary level than seeing somebody get their head ripped off by Godzilla or what. Exactly so fun but 

Todd: different. Well it’s like you said too, especially now, like this is, this is really exploiting the fact that we are constantly now in this communication age, where we have so many different ways to communicate with each other, we have so many different ways that we’re leaving traces behind.

You know, we’re out constantly taking photos with our camera and videos and things with our camera. We’re Skyping with people where, you know, we chatting over here with people, you know, I’m video chatting with my parents a lot. I don’t usually record it, but, you know, I mean, he, you know, I think Levinson chose this format when he’s.

He was thinking about the Pompei disaster and basically thought, well, my God, like if that had happened today, there, you could just round up everyone’s cell phone footage and their Skype conversations and stuff and get a much clearer picture of what happened. And that’s where I think this movie kind of falls a little short is in the rap.

At the end of the whole deal, you know, basically the it’s, it’s just kind of, the government comes in, I think. And they apparently, and this is all more or less just told to us there’s no footage of it. Right. But it’s just the gov the government came and I think dumped chlorine over everything and managed to kill everything off and then paid off the rest of the town to keep it quiet, to avoid panic.

And I’m thinking, my God, come on. I mean, Yeah, these people are communicating with others. Wasn’t it? That young couple weren’t they actually on the phone with their brother when, or friend or somebody wasn’t even in the town who was there watching when this was going down. I mean, there’s no way in hell that this thing would, that there’d be, you couldn’t find everybody to be able to pay them off, even if they would take the money.

You know what I mean? And so. I found that see to be a little far-fetched. I don’t know, 

Craig: man. They say they claim the filmmakers claim that Homeland security covered it up. Um, and they, they, they quarantines the town, which we saw earlier. People in the town were trying to flee, but they had closed off the only bridge.

And so people couldn’t leave. They said they confiscated everybody’s cameras. Like you said, they, they killed off the ice of pods with incredibly high concentrations of chlorine. And I said 75 or 80% of Chesapeake bay is lifeless. I was wrong. My notes tell me it’s 40%, which according to the trivia that I read is accurate.

Now I don’t cite me on that. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but they, they, uh, the government attributed. What happened to unseasonably high water temperatures. And that just sounds, yep. That sounds like what would get reported and that I would believe it. And then, you know, it ends again, you know, showing us like it did in the beginning, all this presumably real footage.

Mass deaths of fish and, and all kinds of stuff like that, but also, you know, uh, right alongside footage of, again, water activities, like life just goes back to normal. You see, you know, the same things that we saw before of all of these people doing all kinds of things in around with Y. Now, I don’t know. I really am not a conspiracy theorist and it’s very difficult.

This for me, in my lifetime, the level of conspiracy theory that exists in our world is unprecedented for me. It’s there, there have always been conspiracy theories. Um, but they are so widespread at this point. And there’s so much buy-in to them, people that I know. Are buying into these conspiracy theories, people that I never would have expected educated people.

And I always have to kind of check myself and, and, and say, you know, I don’t believe these things, but who’s to say there’s not some truth to them, you know, ultimately I don’t know, but it’s just the, the, the idea that this could, I guess what I’m trying to say. Many people today, if they heard this story and were told this story as though it were true, or if they read about it on Facebook and were told that it was true, they would be, they would 100%.

Without 

Todd: question and you’d see a documentary like this. I think this might be the only horror movie that Barry Levinson has ever 

Craig: done. Yeah. I don’t know. The name is familiar. 

Todd: I mean, he, he, uh, the natural young Sherlock Holmes. Good morning. Vietnam rain, man. Avalon toys, sleepers. Toys, the dog 

Craig: toy toys is one of my favorite movies.

I think it’s my favorite Robin Williams movie. If you ha, it’s not a horror movie, it’s not a horror movie at all, but I still highly recommend it. It’s kind of unknown. It’s not one of his better known roles, but it’s so, and all 

Todd: the time. Oh, and young Sherlock Holmes, I saw that in the theater and I loved it.

And that movie has seen. Been lost to history. And, uh, and I still liked that more. I went back and watched and I was like, damn this, why don’t people remember this movie more? So, yeah. I mean, he has a crazy voila, but I think this was his only dip into horror. So that’s kind of interesting. 

Craig: It was good. I mean, I.

Yeah, I think it’s really effective. And I think it’s well done. Uh, I, I told you, I said it’s found footage, but not in the way that we usually talk about found footage. I told you it’s more like a documentary. So it’s a compilation of news footage and interviews, and some, you know, found. Of of people filming their own experiences or whatever, but I just feel like it it’s put together really well.

Uh it’s well edited. Um, it’s it’s no, it’s not boring. It’s it’s it’s short. It’s under an hour now. It’s never boring. The pace keeps up the tension builds. Um, scary. It is scary. And I jump 

Todd: scares. I mean, my God, it’s gory. It’s great. As a horror movie, it’s fantastic. Well, and I was 

Craig: worried about people, you know, I was worried about Donna.

I kept, you know, we only see her camera, man. And when we see him, it’s when he can stop to splash some water on his face. And then it says he died the following day. Um, I, you know, of course it’s a little bit of an emotional cheat, but throw that baby in there. I was worried about them. Yep. But the mom and the baby, presumably get away by the way.

Not before there’s another jump scare where they’re kind of not attacked, but I don’t know a better word for it. Kind of attacked by somebody who’s infected. And you see one of the ice of pods crawling towards the baby, but the mom, the mom, not even realizing what’s happening, the mom pulls the baby away just in the Nick of time.

And one of the last things you see is just her with holding. The, the baby’s carrier and walking down the desolate street out of town. Um, so the baby makes it presumably 

Todd: worry folks.

Craig: But yeah, I mean, it was just, it left me feel, it made me think, not specifically, I, I’m not terribly worried about these ice pods really, but, um, it did concern me about other, uh, environmental factors, um, that are very real and very scary and very dangerous. Um, and in that way, I think it’s really effective.

And I would, I have recommended this movie to, uh, friends. I think it’s really what. Yeah, I 

Todd: completely agree with you. I thought it was a very effective horror movie. It was, it was engaging from beginning to end, just really well done and a very good use of the found footage genre. Really quite nice.

Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share with a friend, just Google us online, and two guys and a chainsaw podcast. We’ll bring up our Facebook page, our Twitter feed. And our website and leave us a comment there. We’d have a few more requests coming up, get your request in as well.

And, uh, we we’ll get to that. Until next time I am Todd and I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.

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