A close cousin to the 1999 hit film "Deep Blue Sea," "Bait" shares the schlock of that film without the big budget and studio backing but delivers a similar amount of goodness.
A product of a joint venture between Singapore and Australia, "Bait" was given a theatrical release Down Under, in 3D, no less. This is obvious watching on home video, with several shots that would seem to lend themselves to the 3D experience, including sharks leaping "at" the camera.
"Bait" contains a healthy-enough number of legitimate scares, even if its central conceit is utterly ridiculous: A year after a shark attack left his best friend (and fiancee's brother) dead, ex-lifeguard Josh (Xavier Samuel) has lost his girl Tina (Sharni Vinson) and his job, toiling as a stockboy at the local grocery store.
A freak tsunami coincides with a botched store robbery, and next thing we know, the grocery is flooded with sea water. And as the water pours in, so too does a great white shark — 12 feet of him, according to our heroes.
Most of the people in the store were killed by the flood, but those who are left take refuge on top of store shelves, including Josh and Tina. Others are stranded in the "car park" (which most of us Midwesterners call a "parking garage") behind the store, with a second shark.
The sharks are mostly CGI behemoths but are decently rendered by the standards of films of this ilk. Certain gore effects — say, a sequence where a man dangling by a rope is bitten in half — are done very well for the money that was apparently put into the production.
The acting is of standard level for a film like this, hardly anything resembling good but neither is it particularly bad. Established Hollywood actor Julian McMahon ("Fantastic Four," TV's "Nip/Tuck") plays the part of a man robbing the store to save his brother, who is in trouble with the mob.
"Bait" is an above-average schlock film. It's not as outlandish and crazy as it could have been, but it does what it does with style and a budgetarily proportionate amount of grace. We've seen films that do much the same thing in a variety of SyFy films and theatrical releases such as the "Piranha" films.