Fourth of July festivities in a quaint small town on the Chesapeake Bay are spoiled by the mass ingestion of tongue-eating isopods, all fortuitously recorded by never-before-seen news footage and consumer-grade cameras, in this, Barry Levinson's collaboration with the Paranormal Activity boys. The result — Levinson's very own Silent Spring — is just as strident as late George Romero but a lot less fun. No one has considered the consequences of the media: unlike the home video and security cameras one employs if one suspects one's house is haunted, cell phones and Skype are two-way and often used to call out of town, making the film's government cover-up implausible. You may wonder why nobody drank bottled water, or how a fish parasite would so quickly figure out where the human tongue is, or why the director of Diner thought gore was the best way to get his message across. But at least Levinson hammers it home that his beloved Chesapeake — like this movie — is 40 percent dead.
