Wednesday 15 May 2013

Bait (15)

Dara O'Briain once proposed the theory that there are no such things as guilty pleasures - if something gives you pleasure, he said, why do you feel guilty about it.

And he had a point. I have more than a passing penchant for the glam metal bands that came crawling out of LA in the mid-to-late 1980s. Don't feel a bit guilty about that.

Then there's Bait. A film so bad you laugh when a man is bitten in half. A film so bad you're quite happy that a man throws his girlfriend's pooch in the drink to save his own sorry hide, because you can't stand all three of them. A bad, bad film, yet somehow I didn't hate it.

And that is making me feel very guilty.



The premise sounds like it should be fun. Tsunami hits small Aussie town, people get trapped with a great white shark, hilarity ensues, no? All while another group are stuck in the underground car park. With a great white shark. It should be gory horror gold.

The fact it isn't is still puzzling me now.

Let's start at the start.

Rory (Richard Brancatisano) and Josh (Xavier Samuel) are lifeguards and friends, with Josh having just got engaged to Rory's sister Tina (Sharni Vinson). Josh should be checking the buoy, but as he's hungover Rory does the decent thing and scoots out on the jetski. Inevitably, a shark pops up, eats the fat bloke we've seen wander past in an unsubtle way and then eats Rory while everyone is scrambling to stop that very thing happening.

Then the opening credits roll, and we're a year down the line. Tina is gone and Josh is working at the local supermarket full of self-loathing and regret.

So far, so bad.

But it gets worse.

We are introduced to the other players in the game - the girl with issues who steals stuff, her boyfriend who works at the store, her dad the cop, the couple in the car park with the dog and the men who plan to rob the place. Oh, and the store manager and the security guard. And the girl who fills shelves. That's everyone in place...

We've had the omens of foreboding, of course. Birds doing weird things, the news story telling us sharks are in town, and the tremor that precedes the tsunami. And all this takes 40 minutes - 40 minutes where you could actually build the tension. But no. We have to put up with some dodgy 3D and more clues than we need that these characters are going to be badly drawn and talk in cliches.

Which is a shame, because once we're in the water, once we're all crammed into one small store (and a car park), there are moments that are genuinely quite tense. There's even a moment which makes you jump. Sure, just the one - but that's better than none and more than you'd expect from the long drawn-out introduction.

From here on in people get bitten and chewed, wounds are healed, personal epiphanies are had and the whole philosophical debate is tackled. Yup. The BIG one. While perched on a shelf unit in a flooded supermarket. It's so bonkers it's brilliant.

Amazingly there is a twist, and you can entertain yourself for a good half hour guessing which one doesn't make it out of the car park. But after that you're pretty much done. Some more gore and goo arrives, but it's all a bit 'meh'.

You see, there are many problems with Bait. Many, many problems. So let's start at the top.

From the get-go, the 3D is appalling. Granted I was watching it in 2D, but you could see which bits were going to be flying out of the screen at you - it was like Avatar had never happened. It could have been cheesy in the good way, like it was trying to ape the 3D "classics" of yore, but it wasn't. There's actually a moment where a metal spinny wheel thing (don't know what it was or where it originated from, that seemingly wasn't important) embeds itself in someone's face. Should be a shock, a jolt,  a moment to squirm, but it's not. It's bloody hilarious.

Then there's the acting.

Now Sharni, bless 'er, might have been great in Home And Away. She might have been the glue holding Step Up 3D together. But she can't act. Looks fine in a bikini early on, sure, but she's grieving for her brother while he's still alive wondering what all the yelling's about. And there's a moment later on which could have been almost poignant - but we cut to Sharni for a reaction, and the moment is not so much lost as killed.

Then there's Julian McMahon. He's been in Nip/Tuck. He's been in the Fantastic Four films. And here he is. Looking confused. Maybe he's doing some sort of community service. Maybe he feels, having done rather well in Hollywood he'd help out at home while visiting the family. Maybe he's a masochist and enjoys this sort of thing. Whatever his reasons for doing this, he shouldn't have. He just looks lost.

And if that wasn't enough, there's the whole science of the thing. For a start, this is the first tsunami in history that fails to knock out the town's electricity. Whole town under water, supermarket awash, and yet the electricity is flowing. Handy, but puzzling to the point of being a distraction. And don't get me started on the whole physics of the thing. The lay-out of this place would baffle the Tardis.

Add to all this a bunch of people you can't care about, special effects made with a Magna Doodle (don't claim budget constraints - Monsters managed, so can you), so many people taking the time to tackle personal issues and a couple you just want to see trapped in their car forever, and you've got a horror film for all the wrong reasons.



So why didn't I hate it? And why does this make me feel guilty?

Well, the guilt centres around the fact that every fibre in my being is telling me that, logically, I should hate this film. But you can't hate a film this hokey. It's kind of enjoyable. It made me laugh. Sure, not in the right places or for any reasons the many writers would feel good about, but hey - don't like it, write a better script.

Watching Bait is a dumb, stupid, pointless way to spend your time - but that's not always a bad thing. Brainless fun does what it says on the tin. Doesn't tax the brain cells, passes the time.

Sure there are better films to watch, but there are many that are a whole lot worse. And they're the ones taking up valuable space at the multiplexes...



* After a one-day screening in Leicester Square, Bait is now available on DVD

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