Any movie that opens with the hero (played by Xavier Samuel) doing an exaggerated Darth Vader esq “Nooooooo!” after losing his brother in a freak Shark attack should tell you everything you need to know about how seriously you should take it. The opening sequence and a name like Bait 3D means you are in for some a campy good time. Someone forgot to tell the Director Kimble Rendall and the producers that’s what the audience wants.
The Hi-Def cinematography in this movie is surprisingly strong. It looks like took footage directly from a Sony Red Camera and plopped it directly onto a Blu-ray disk without much post processing work. It is that freakishly sharp and shiny. The staging and production values on this are surprisingly strong.
A lot of effort went into creating a world where a Tsunami completely floods out a large Walmart style shopping complex. We have people trapped in the store and others stuck underwater in cars. There is clearly some complex set decoration going on. It seems like the entire production budget was probably spent on creating this environment and the initial tidal wave.
Six people are credited with writing this screenplay which probably means most of it was probably improvised on set. The dialogue is a bit stilted, but then you don’t really watch a movie like this for Shakespearean acting. The movie features a cast of mostly unknown Australian Actors, but it does have one notable name – Julian McMahon (of Nip/Tuck fame) as someone who is forced to rob the store – before the Tsunami hit. The final plan to kill the Shark was confusing.
Not sure if this was filmed in 3D or simply upscaled. It works ok for this type of movie, but everything looked weirdly out of proportion and on my new passive 55 inch Vizio set the 3D had some fuzziness around the edges.
Blu-ray Extras
There aren’t any. Just a DVD and 2D Copy of the film. I do like that the 2D and 3D versions are on the same disk.
Conclusion
The movie is called Bait 3D, where is the Shark? We see him in the beginning and we get lots of brief glimpses of him, but it takes a long time before the Shark starts chomping people. There is a fine line between building suspense and simply “padding.” At 90 minutes the movie works surprisingly well and moves at a good clip. It just wasn’t as campy or bloody as it probably should have been. It is well worth a rental.
Grades
- Movie – B
- Audio/Video – B
- 3D Quality – C
- Extras – F
Final Overall Grade – B