BAIT (2012)

BAIT (2012)

Tagline: The ultimate predator is coming to a store near you!

(Action, Horror, If Birds Are Freaking Out…Run) [R]

Curious about what, sharks are only curious about one thing. It's trying to decide if we're food or not!

In this one after a horrific shark attack kills her brother, Tina decides to dump her fiancé Josh. As a result, he decides to start working at a grocery store. She apparently still lives in the area and decides to go shopping there on the day at the store Josh works at. These two are like shark magnets because a freak tsunami floods a grocery store along with a couple of thieves and customers and employees trapping them in. That would be a bad enough situation, but to top things off, there are 12-foot Great White sharks picking them off one by one as they try to stay above the water. Will anyone survive the shark onslaught, or will they all end up…BAIT?

First off, in the opening scene of this movie, you get to see what is probably the deepest blue ocean in any shark movie I’ve watched. This is coming from a guy that has seen probably 40 or more at this point. Aside from that BAIT is one of the most well-crafted shark flicks ever made thus far. Some of the effects are a little off, but overall this shark looks pretty freakin cool. In production, they used 3 different animatronic sharks and as little CGI as they could. This movie wasn’t a bomb like so many other shark movies. This one actually did extremely well and prompted producers to say they would make a second installment. They never did, but maybe we are better off for it? The movie stands on its own. A lot like SHARK BAIT, this one is not for the faint of heart. 

This flick does have a few well-known actors and actresses. Sharni Vinson who plays Tina was also in the horror movie YOU’RE NEXT and does a pretty solid job in this. We get Phoebe Tonkin who plays Jaime, the troubled daughter of a cop who happens to be at the grocery store because she stole from there. Tonkin is famous for the TV series “The Originals”. Then probably the most talented actor in this is Julian McMahon. The name probably doesn’t pop into your head as “yeah, I know that guy”, but he’s famous for playing Victor Von Doom in both FANTASTIC FOUR movies in the early 2000s. Having said that, it doesn’t mean all of the acting or the script is without issues. There are a lot of pretty lame lines in this movie.

What works in this movie is the tension and the effects. Probably second only to DEEP BLUE SEA, this movie does a fantastic job with these sharks. There are also some likable characters and some pretty gnarly death scenes for shark movie fans that are into that. 

Where this movie falls a little flat is in not giving us enough backstory about the characters that live quite some time to care about them all. The other thing that I wasn’t thrilled about was the uneven score. It feels like some of this movie is trying to get us to take these scenes seriously and other parts of the score are trying to get us to buy pharmaceuticals.

Overall as far as shark movies go, BAIT isn’t the most “fun” shark movie, but it’s probably the 2nd best-produced shark movie made as of the writing of this review. There is enough to love here to set this thing apart from nearly every other shark movie out there. For me, this is a 7 out of 7.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF BAIT PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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