Shark Bait
VERTICALIt’s as if every month now, a shark-infested feature from yours truly is dished out, and regardless of day, month and year one certain aspect joins them all together: they are all inexplicably bad. It seems they’ve all learnt from Spielberg’s Jaws that not showing the monster is far more effective than actually showing it on screen, even if this is due to the shark never wanting to work properly, or in this instance because filmmakers are choosing to use CGI through home programs to construct this actually tame monster of the depths. Ultimately when it is shown – in all its thunderous disaster – the audience are just waiting for it to eat its way to the end of the feature.
Granted, the latter might be a damming morbid statement, but with each and every new venture in this sub-genre the filmmakers – each and every one of them – seem to start and finish production without a screenplay. Every single feature seems to struggle with the human element in the performance and reaction of emotional intensity and tension. Any actor or actress who has been taught the profession of performance should have an insight into exceeding emotional merit but in each feature audiences are being bombasted with, it seems to be the major missing piece, and in its absence, it shows the absolute worst in the performances on screen. Shark Bait is no different at all. For eighty minutes, the viewer is shown an almost damning and pathetic amount of poor camaraderie that is more insulting than immersive. For each arc of five characters, the feature and screenplay showcase little to no substance that the audience will find engaging. Writer Nick Saltrese does try and inject a layer of personal torment and heartbreak but it comes out of nowhere, is given zero amount of interest, and radicalises the viewer in hating the characters more, and if a feature is pushing its audience to root for the monster for victory, then something has gone horribly wrong.
The premise does have a hint of tension and atmosphere in its setting, which slowly but surely finds its audience drifting away from civilisation as the five characters see their chances of survival dwindle as the seconds go down, but again, the film does little to substantiate this theme and instead relies on the woefully inept screenplay of bickering instead of the tonal attributes of life and death. But again, Shark Bait does showcase an understanding of its genre and set-piece in small moments of intrigue, but alas, a drop of rain does not merit a thunderstorm.
Attacking the CGI feels like a low blow, and Shark Bait does as much as it can in making the creature effective as a monster who wants blood, but the choices the film depicts said shark in are often laughably poor. Think Jaws The Revenge with the shark barking or whatever it does, and here it has an equally as dubious manner of projecting on-screen with an Olympic like manner of jumping for its prey that looks utterly ridiculous and takes whatever tension and atmosphere the film has and flushes it down the toilet. The gore and practical effects show some promise and look more often than not fantastic on screen in the sheer brutality of their depiction but alas that is really it if at all what is left of this shallow poor piece of a feature that has very small moments of something interesting, but continuously struggles to even take it up one more notch to something worthy of substance and merit – which, if anything, is a real a shame.
