6. The Bay (2012)
--> Blood and guts never seemed like Barry Levinsons thing, nor did horror for that matter, but when the legendary Baltimore-born director finally turned his attention to the genre, he seemed like an old hat at it. The Bay is a gruesome and surprisingly introspective look at ecosystem collapse. When the Fourth of July festivities in a town on Marylands Eastern Shore is interrupted by a brutal and devastating epidemic that leaves the hospitals filled and the streets lined with dead. Levinson immerses the viewer in the routines of the day and sketches out the investigative journalism angle early, leaving plenty of time for the horror itself to manifest organically. Instead of using the found footage as an excuse to obscure or alleviate the need for concrete imagery, Levinson drenches us in gag-inducing viscera and enhances the damage via the hand-held lens.As the day wears on, all reasonable sense of safety dissipates and the mood becomes reminiscent of apocalyptic zombie movies with a dose of small-town realism applied to emotionally ground us. The Bay never spends too much time being preachy, although it takes pains to make its villainsthe isopods-- a reasonably plausible threat that will get your skin-crawling and inspire a few thoughts about environmental fall-out. At the end of the day, this is a 70s paranoid thriller crossed with a 1950s B creature feature and its surprisingly creepy. A very fine horror debut from one of our great directors, and arguably the most visually intense item the sub-genre has to offer in recent years.