BAIT 3D. (2012) DIRECTED BY KIMBLE RENDALL. STARRING SHARNI VINSON, JULIAN MCMAHON, LINCOLN LEWIS AND XAVIER SAMUEL.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I really enjoyed this shark-filled disaster movie, even though some reviews proclaim it to be a bit on the lame side. I loved the premise, that of an ordinary Australian supermarket rendered suddenly underwater when a giant tsunami strikes without warning. Well, for the humans in the film, it might have been without warning, but the dogs and the birds knew the score all right, God bless their sixth sense…!
So, anyway, the tsunami strikes the supermarket (well, it strikes the Australian coast, really, but the supermarket’s the only place that concerns us), and it’s a very discerning natural disaster, too. Why do I say this?
Well, because it strikes at the exact moment that a robbery is taking place in the store (it foils the robbery, naturally, as it’s hard to keep your gun trained on the store manager while you’re being washed away by a giant wave), and it only kills the extras in the film and leaves all the attractive lead characters alive and well. Now, that’s what I call a smart tsunami, lol.
The survivors have to climb up onto the supermarket shelves in order to get out of the water. It’s only when a security guard trying to find a way out gets dragged underwater and unexpectedly eaten (well, you’d never really be expecting that, would you, nom, nom, nom) that the survivors realise that a twelve-foot great white shark has been washed into the store by the tsunami, along with all the other bits of random flotsam and jetsam.
There are some survivors left outside in the drowned car-park as well, and, just so they don’t feel in any way left out, there’s a great white shark out there too with them, trying to pick ’em off one by one and make a nice square meal out of ’em.
The movie then revolves around the survivors’ attempts to flee the underwater supermarket without attracting the attention of the sharks, for whom the dinner bell has been well and truly rung.
The film is kind of like THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, but with added sharks. Now that really would have put the willies up Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Grandpa Joe, Nancy Drew & Co., wouldn’t it?
One of the most interesting points about the film for me, apart, of course, from the sharks, was the fact that loads of its good-looking cast members used to be in Antipodean soap opera HOME & AWAY, for years and years my absolute favourite daytime soap. Remember Tom and Pippa in the old caravan park? Donald Fisher the school principal? Chris Hemsworth as the shirtless Kim Hyde? Sure ya do!
Julian McMahon, who plays the robber (but not by choice!) Doyle in BAIT 3D, was Carly’s squeeze Ben in HOME & AWAY. Sharni Vinson, the lead girl in BAIT 3D, was Cassie Turner for years in the popular soap, playing a damaged young girl who’d been affected by sexual abuse by an uncle and domestic violence by a partner, both good meaty storylines. Her last big storyline before she left the soap for good saw her pregnant and infected with HIV.
Lincoln Lewis who, as Kyle in BAIT 3D, has some great comic moments out in the flooded car-park with his fashion victim girlfriend Heather and her little pocket dog Bully, played goody-two-shoes Geoff Campbell, nicknamed ‘Bible Boy’ by HOME & AWAY bad boy Aden Jeffries, in the show for a few years.
He might have been a Bible-thumper, but they still made him take his top off in the show and display the ridiculously perfect abdominal muscles all the young male actors in the soap were contractually obliged to possess.
Remember the way they’d show Geoff, Aden and Chris Hemsworth as Kim Hyde fresh out of the shower, a low-slung towel around the hips and the rock-hard six packs literally rippling for Australia? Phwoar. Remind me again why I was daft enough to stop watching HOME & AWAY? It had all the best abs of anywhere in the whole world, bar none.
Oh yes. I remember now. When I started writing in earnest in 2009, I lost touch with the soap, but I still remember it with fondness, and I love the way its actors and actresses keep turning up in different films. I also always preferred HOME & AWAY to NEIGHBOURS. I just could never get into NEIGHBOURS, for some reason.
Anyway, I think BAIT 3D is a better film than the critics give it credit for. I mean, it’s got great shark action and the sets are genuinely terrific; everything’s underwater and looks real and credible.
It’s kind of like THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE meets DEEP BLUE SEA and, as I love both these films, that’s actually a big compliment. It’s a disaster movie-shark attack crossover, and it gets my thumbs-up.
Have fun with it. And, if ever your dog tells you a tsunami’s coming (trust me; he’ll know!), don’t, whatever you do, go straight to the big supermarket in the precinct. Stay local, grab your tins of Pedigree Chum, then get the hell home…
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books.
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