"Sharks are only curious about one thing - it's trying to decide if we're food or not...!"
Anchor Bay / 93 Minutes / 2012 / Rated R / Street Date: September 18, 2012
It's probably best to just get it out of the way here at the top: Bait is a terrible, terrible movie. With a retread plot, hokey acting, and CGI effects that appear to have been made using somebody's PC laptop from five years ago, the film is roundly ridiculous... which is, for better and for worse, part of its so-shitty-it's-fun feel. In short, Baiton 3D Blu-ray is everything the original Piranha remake wanted to be (save that film's sorely-missed nudity). A swimming killer and obnoxious characters who do everything they can notto get eaten is pretty much all that's on hand here, and if you shut your brain stem down for an hour-and-a-half, there's magic here.
Here's how our particular shark tale begins. There's a bad tsunami off the coast of Australia that really pounds the place, uprooting folks in nasty, unfortunate ways. But Bait recognizes that it's not just terrestrial beings who have been compromised in this event. See, the only haven for a mishmash group of folks trying to save themselves from mother nature's tidal wave terror is a half-flooded supermarket... and said grocery is just flooded enough that a shark that has been tsunami-ed from its home at sea sets up shop there and starts chomping on tidal wave survivors.
Yeah, there are characters and backstories and human complications among Bait's cast of shark victims here, but the only way to get even marginal entertainment out of this 3D movie is to pop open a beer, throw on your 3D spectacles and root for the shark (understatement of the year: this ain't Jaws). It's fun that Bait's filmmakers chose to have most of their tale unfold in an isolated location, but even stalwart defenders of the movie can't deny that when sharkie isn't feasting on human flesh, things get a little dull.
As long as film viewership continues to thrive, though, an appreciation for awful movies will persist, and for cinephiles who need hideous movies like Bait every once in a while to clean their palates, this 3D Blu-ray might just be a godsend. I would never publicly admit that I have anything but resentment toward the movie's numb-skull dramatic sensibilities, but I may have watched the thing twice before writing this review. Just don't quote me on that.
