Keeping It Brief: Four and 1/2 Paragraphs About “Shark Bait”
It could’ve been so much worse, and I would know. I watch this stuff for a living. Shark Bait is a Tubi original about a shark attacking a group of college kids (not very original) who are stranded on a jetski in the middle of the ocean (pretty original). It’s not a great film. It’s not even a good film. It could be described as garbage but that’s a little unfair. This movie is a shark film and should not be subject to normal standards of film. Shark films are there own genre and have their own crosses to bear. This one gets a lot of things right and very little wrong. It’s just not great because except for Jaws, I’m not sure there are many great shark films.
Let’s look at what it does right. For one thing, it’s got a great cast. Not very good actors, but very good victims. The plot and sequencing works well- there is a whole night sequence that is terrifying and the black guy dying second is a shocking twist on a familiar trope (I kid, I kid.) The camera work is pretty good actually. I bet it was scary filming it because you’re in the middle of the ocean looking straight down A LOT. Ironically they could’ve easily fallen victim to a real shark. Which brings me to my final point- there is a shark. A real CGI generated shark. Not a Dino-Shark, or a Super Great White or a Megaladon or a Two-Headed Shark (that was a fun movie actually). A real, normal, situationally appropriate shark. As someone who has seen a few shark films without sharks (of these Lucia Garibaldi’s The Sharks is by far the best..it just has very little to do with sharks) I was glad that this film checked that box.
In terms of things it does poorly…well it’s a horror film so the characters are dumbasses college kids. They steal these jet skis and then play chicken with them and of course, someone gets hurt and they total both jet skis. #Iconic. What’s sad is that’s probably I would’ve done this a short 14 months ago when I was in college. Take your meds kids, bipolar is no joke. Anywhos, these kids are stuck in the middle of the ocean with a very aggressive shark and they’re toast. One of them breaks his leg, a very gross and unpleasant compound fracture that lures the shark right to them. I applaud the guts to show something that realistic and gross on screen simply because that happens to people everyday while being bisected by a shark does not. So yeah, the characters are very dumb, even by college standards. And there’s five of them so there should be a brain between them somewhere.
The shark himself is a great villain. He oozes of just pure evil. He’s angry and demonic, a pure force of nature. He loves playing with his food before he eats it and finds some truly gruesome ways to end his victims. The scene at night where the shark is just terrorizing them without actually killing anyone is brilliant and freaked me out. This movie did scare me at many points, I must admit. The final girl is surprisingly likable for a cast that is relatively unknown. She’s probably the smartest one too and manages to figure out how to fix the jetski by the end of the film. Whether you would say the acting is great or not, she’s got heart and I respect it.
Overall, this movie is not the best thing you’ll see. It’s probably terrible. I didn’t really watch it in that headspace, I just focused on the entertainment value. And I was entertained. It was better than many shark films I have seen and fit perfectly into the catalogue of Tubi originals, classics such as The Deadly Dilf and Traphouse, films that are meta almost right from the getgo. It’s maybe not a good movie but it’s good for what it is.
