Josh (Xavier Samuel) is a haunted lifeguard who has lost his friend in a shark attack. A year later he’s working in a supermarket, his gal Tina (Sharni Vinson) has left him and his life is in the dumps.
While the supermarket is in the middle of a robbery a tsunami comes along and floods the whole place. An eclectic group of survivors try to figure out how to get out of there, but a new wrinkle has been added to their escape. The giant wave has also brought along a great white shark who’s now swimming up and down the aisles and is awfully hungry.
I don’t wan to mislead you – Bait is a pretty stupid movie, but it almost reaches to the ‘so bad it’s good’ category. In fact, for all those folks who still tuned in to laugh at the ‘trying-so-hard-to-be-bad-that-it’s-funny’ desperation of that last Sharknado movie, they’d be better served watching Bait.
Here’s a movie that tries with great earnestness to sell such a ridiculous premise that its sincerity is what makes it quite funny. What do you think is funnier – a movie that is trying to goto such extreme lengths for ‘stupid funny’ by having sharks flying around in the wild west, time traveling heroes, a robotic Tara Reid head shooting lasers out of her eyes and filled with unsubtle, stupid jokes to warrant its existence.
OR a movie with folks trapped in a flooded supermarket surrounded by sharks, playing it all straight, loaded with insipid dialogue and drama that we’re meant to get invested in and trying to get us to hope like hell the little dog survives.
I know which one I’d rather watch.
Plus, it wholeheartedly added 3D, not as a joke but because it believed it would actually make its subpar special effects even more impressive and assist in the excitement!
This is already sounding pretty funny!
There’s not much to discuss with this flick other than the ludicrous situations that arise. Somehow Julian McMahon ended up in this, which I was pretty surprised to see. He’s the robber who maybe isn’t such a bad guy after all (or so the movie wants us to accept).
Tina has brought along her new boyfriend who has a moment that made me really laugh. You see, there are some low hanging electrical wires and once the flooding waters rise high enough to touch them they will electrocute the entire place.
So, they have to figure out a way to turn off the power that’s in a room underwater. This guy volunteers and they make a makeshift anti-shark suit made out of shopping carts! The reveal of this suit gave me a bigger laugh than anything in the last five Sharknado movies!
While all this is going on there’s also the parking garage that is underwater with its own shark. An annoying couple are trapped in their submerged car with the shark circling around them. They’re the ones with the cute little dog.
As bad as all this is, I have to admit it was refreshing to see a shark movie that isn’t going for laughs or legitimately trying to be stupid for the sake of badness. There were no “clean up in aisle six” jokes or anything silly like that.
There has been a glut of those silly shark movies that have saturated cable channels in the last five years. I did enjoy that here was a flick trying its hardest to make such an outrageous premise something we were meant to swallow and give us a genuine suspense-filled yarn. They didn’t exactly succeed, but props for them for trying.
I also enjoyed some of the gory bits too. They were sandwiched in between a lot of shoddy CGI, but there are a few good bloody shots.
If you missed Bait (and I’m guessing most people have) you’re no worse for it. If you’re a fan of lousy shark movies though, it should be up your alley.
If you’re mildly curious and don’t want to devote the time to watching the movie, you can check out the trailer for a quick breakdown of it.
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