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elcome back to Movie Monthly where we dedicate a whole month to just one kind of movie. This month to coincide with both Shark Week and the 40th anniversary of Jaws it’s Terror from the Deep, dedicating all of July to ocean horror films. Last week we looked at the enjoyable sleaze and cheese B-movie Shark Night 3D, this week we go nearly clear across the globe for much of the same thing only from Australia with Bait 3D. This month will probably be more inclined towards B-movies overall as I’ve always founds attempts at serious shark horror films to be taxing in the extreme.
Most of the time the movie will only amount to “What Jaws did but less” and rarely transcends
the limitations of a horror story where the central antagonist can’t survive
outside of the water. No I
maintain that sharks, much like zombies, work far better in that often
misunderstood subset of horror that is the B-Movie. These are flicks that wear the trappings of a horror film in
character and design as well as co-opting horror antagonists to drive the
action but are focused more on cheesy thrills and sleazy action rather than
scares to drive the story. Bait 3D is, in many ways, a perfect
example of this and makes a greater sister film to Shark Night 3D.
The plot of Bait 3D
seems to have been cooked up as a cinematic dare about making an entire movie
based solely off of a joke premise.
The set-up is that a major tsunami hits somewhere along the Australian
coast and a group of people ended up trapped with a 12-inch great white shark
inside of a flooded supermarket. What
I really love about this is how it’s not even like the filmmakers had a
complete thought in mind went they went with this approach. The idea is cut from a similar cloth to
Edgar Wright’s The World’s End the
difference is that there was a complete cinematic idea there. In The
World’s End the narrative hyperbole and “joke” of the story is about how
the changing march of globalization and moderation is like a secret alien
invasion. In Bait 3D the central joke is “humans get food from a supermarket so
what if they WERE the food in a supermarket,” which I grant is certainly more
of an idea than a lot of other shark films I’ve slogged through for this
month.
Aside from the very jokey nature of the premise there’s really
not much that’s too humorous or even over the top about Bait 3D. In many ways
that serves as one of the film’s biggest flaws and I have to wonder if it does
lie with the static nature of the story’s location and antagonists. I’ll be using Shark Night 3D as a sort of sounding board for how to create a
truly bonkers shark movie here and what really pushes it over the edge is the
emphasis on crazy killer motivations and having a varied array of sharks on
hand. In Bait 3D there’s just the one shark in just the one supermarket with
no real human antagonists. This
doesn’t mean the film is bad or even without its funnier dopey moments like
crafting a wearable shark cage out of grocery goods; it’s just a different kind
of movie. The closest point of
comparison I have for it is like a more serious version of the monster comedy Tremors.
Most of the action is designed around maneuvering around the
handful of safe spaces above the water and seeing the various characters
interact as they try to MacGyver their way out of the supermarket. The characters themselves are a diverse
band none of which ever really rises above passingly interesting. There’s some drama with our main
character as an ex-life guard haunted by the one person he couldn’t save from
sharks but it’s not enough to make you remember his name after the film’s
over. It does however add an
interesting dimension to the film in terms of focus. Even though the US statistically suffers from the most shark
attacks per year our actual fear of sharks is pretty slim, hence why so many US
shark movies end up reflection of Jaws. However, in Australia where they have
the 2nd most shark attacks, sharks end up a major boogeyman. In a lot of ways this probably reflects
a difference in how our two countries relate to the natural world and animals
in particular. That’s the nature
of horror films however, to act as a repository for cultural anxieties and
guilt like how Canadian horror features a major fear of technology or how
Guillermo Del Toro’s more horror infused work tends to touch on the nature of
living within a tyrannical reign.
Bait 3D is by no
means a superb film but it’s a fun one and certain one of the better shark
movies out there. The
straight-faced sincerity that the film executes itself with is engaging enough
to keep things from dragging and there’s enough imagination to fill up the
90-minute running time. What’s
more it’s a solid entry point into the broader world of Australian horror films
and the unique sensibilities that inform them. Next week: something other than sharks.
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