Bait

'Sand Sharks', 'Two Headed Shark Attack', 'Shark Night 3D', 'Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus', 'Psycho Shark', 'Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus', 'Super Shark', 'Swamp Shark', 'Shark Bait', 'Jersey Shore Shark Attack' and 'Malibu Shark Attack'. These are all low budget Shark Attack movies, all somewhere on this site, that we've seen in the last couple years. It's almost as if we here at the FCU have a Shark Attack movie fetish. We don't, but it's almost like that. I mention all of those other Shark Attack movies because this import from Down Under, 'Bait', is better than all of them. Maybe all of them combined. But here's the thing, even if 'Bait' is better than all those other Shark Attack movies combined, there's a chance it could still suck total ass, because that's how gawdawful the majority of those other low budget shark movies were.

Life is swell for Josh (Xavier Samuel). He's young and fit, has a great job as a Lifeguard, and he's engaged to the lovely Tina (Sharri Vinson) who happens to be the sister of his bestest friend in the whole world. Then one day a shark eats this best friend, Josh blames himself, his wedding is off and Josh is eternally sad.

Fast forward a year and Josh working across the street from the beach he once lorded over, now stocking shelves at the local supermarket. A couple of things are happening at the Australian Piggly Wiggly on this day. For starters Tina shows up there. Why… we don't know, but there she is with her new Singaporean boyfriend. Also, this store is being robbed by Doyle the rouge Supermarket robber (Julian McMahon). I assume Australian supermarkets are flush with cash, because I'm thinking I'd probably rob a bank or even a gas station if I needed some quick cash. Plus they're doing this in the middle of the day, and also our robber had a gun to the head of the winey store manager, walking him through the store and nobody in this crowded store really cared. Obviously this happens in Australia all the time.

Then the tsunami hits, thousands are swept away, hundreds are crushed, limbs are severed and lives are lost. It was kind of awesome. The grocery store is flooded and it has largely collapsed so there is no way out, and there's also an underground parking garage in which some more folks are trapped in. There are a few survivors who planned to just wait it out until help comes, but that giant Great White shark swimming through aisle six has other ideas, probably wondering what he did so right that the Lord above blessed him with this mighty tasty people buffet.

Now what? Well, they could still try to wait it out but eventually the market is going to flood so that's not an option, one of the survivors is up to no good which is an issue, and this shark is a bottomless pit of people eating so the only thing left to do is to be proactive and kill it. Good luck.

Director Kimble Rendall's 'Bait', which some have the option to see in 3D if they so choose, is pretty easy to sum up. Shark stuff… good. Shark interaction with people… good. People interacting with people… not quite as good. There it is. We understand that this is a movie and a movie consisting of nothing but Great White's swimming around in a supermarket eating people probably wouldn't have made for much movie… though as I read that back it does sound like it might make for an awesome movie… but regardless there has to be something supporting the shark mayhem and most movies are better with a little character development, which was certainly something the filmmakers were attempting to infuse here. I just wasn't all that enamored with the melodrama the filmmakers chose to go with. A mighty disrespectful daughter's fractured relationship with her cop father might've been a little more palatable if I weren't sitting there hoping the shark would eat her. A boyfriend and girlfriend's playful banter and the girl's somewhat unnatural love of her Pomeranian… again, I was hoping that all three would get eaten. The depressed ex-boyfriend thing wasn't so bad, even though I could've done without it, but at least I wasn't secretly hoping that Josh and Tina would both get eaten. The best part of the narrative was probably all that went on with the botched Supermarket Robbery… but it's a supermarket robbery which in itself is kind of stupid.

That being said, all that stuff is relatively minor because the main selling point of this movie is Sharks eating annoying humans and that part of 'Bait' was darned entertaining. This movie was plenty violent and gory, for those of you like that kind of thing, the tension of our tasty humans being trapped on top of racks of Ho Ho's was almost always high and the sharks we were dealing with looked very real. I am a little curious how the sharks got into the supermarket, and particularly the underground parking lot in the first place since their really didn't seem to be a way in, and I would think an average sized human would be a pretty decent meal for a shark and maybe they'd relax a while before hitting the buffet line again, but these sharks were nothing if not damned greedy.

True, 'Bait' isn't 'Jaws' or anything, but neither were Jaws 2, 3 or 4 for that matter. But this does make 'Bait' the best shark attack movie I've seen in the last two or three years, and that's a lot of shark attack movies that it had to climb over to achieve this distinction.