Tuesday 6 November 2012

heebee jeebees

In a somewhat formulaic but still nightmare inducing and thought-provoking tradition of fake documentaries, in the spirit of the Blair Witch Project and revisited with the series Paranormal Activity, the same creative team has unleashed another lurid and worrisome monster in The Bay, apparently created out of a potion of pollution, agricultural run-off, steroids and nuclear waste. The inspiration, though not as aggressive in reality (though that maybe owing to the steroids and mutations), for these insidious and alien creatures, however, is not far removed from its portrayal.

An isopod (Asseln) is a kind of primitive crustacean with seven pairs of legs, and the most well-known representative of this family is probably the roly-poly, the pillbug (Kellerassel) but many other live in the water and have adopted scary, parasitic lifestyles. One species can grow to a half a meter in length and scuttles about on the cold, dark ocean floor like an insectoid tank, but the really terrifying one that makes the skin crawl (and the subject of the movie with some cross-overs) is a singular variety called Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating louse. A nymph invades the host fish, usually a Snapper (Barsch) through its gills, before latching onto the tip of its tongue. Growing to a substantial size, eventually the fish's tongue atrophies and falls off and the parasite then acts as a regular tongue. I do not quite buy the idea that the fish just has some ersatz, prosthetic tongue now and no further damage is done to the host, nor to people.  These creatures have an even more bizarre life-cycle, progressing to males from hermaphrodites when attached to the gills and growing into females in the fish's mouth.  True horror is knowing what is out there in nature and its scavenging, resourceful inventions.