SHARK BAIT

 

SHARK BAIT 
C-

This flick felt like a student film through and through & I was actually surprised to see the seniority involved within the project. Screenwriter Nick Saltrese has been in the business for over 30 years, yet the screenplay felt uncomfortably simplistic and formulaic. Director James Nunn has been honing his craft for nearly 15 years & yet the film's direction felt so guarded and played safe that you would have thought this was his first project.  It was predictable from start to finish. One of those once you've seen one, you've seen em' all experiences. You saw the scenes unfold in your head long before they ever happened. You could hear the dialog word for word before it was spoken. It was painfully obvious from the start that Nat would be the sole survivor.  If anyone were to call "SPOILERS!!" in return I ask the following question:  Will the sun rise tomorrow morning? That's how blatantly obvious the film is. 

Nat is immediately established as the one likeable character. While Tyler matches Tom, Milly & Greg in terms of carelessness and stupidity, he's at least not as unsympathetic as the other three characters.  The screenplay gives you little reason to root for Tyler or hope for his survival but at the same time you don't enjoy the Shark's devouring of him in the way you do Greg or Milly. There is an attempt to salvage Tom's deplorable behavior, but we're cheated out of a true act of pure selflessness due to the fact that he's already wounded beyond repair. 

SHARK BAIT could easily be summed up as a film of a group of irresponsible knotheads served up one by one as a smorgasbord for a hungry shark. It absolutely astounds me that as nitpicky as audiences can be in terms of accuracy and honest depiction, you can literally get everything about shark behavior and what a shark would actually do in such a situation W-R-O-N-G, yet nobody bats an eye. 10 minutes on google, you'd quickly find the answer to be "No" in 9/10's of the questions you'd ask in response to this film.  "Would a Shark really?" No.  "Does sharks actually?" No.  No, no, no.  Doesn't matter, because while dramas, comedies, and even pornos are held to a standard, thrillers and horrors obviously aren't. 

There's nothing all that reprehensible about the film. It's sitthroughable. You're not going to run to the video store to obtain a copy to put in your DVD collection but you're not going to turn the film off in disgust either. There are a ton of films way better but this is far from the worst thing I've ever seen either. Slightly below average and you have a very fair grade.