As the story begins, a lifeguard named Josh (Xavier Samuel) is goofing off with his fiancée Tina (Sharni Vinson), the sister of his friend and fellow lifeguard, Rory (Richard Brancatisano). When Rory heads out into the ocean to check on a buoy, he’s unaware of the massive great white shark that’s made its way into the area. Josh quickly heads out on his Jet-Ski in hopes of rescuing his friend; it’s too late though and Rory becomes lunch for the shark.
Moving forward a few years, Josh and Tina have apparently ended their relationship. Josh works at a local mega-mart and Tina comes into shop. Even though she has a new man who has accompanied her to the store, Tina and Josh exchange what-could-have-been glances. While this is going on, security guard Ryan (Alex Russell) gets fired by the store’s owner manager (Adrian Pang) when his girlfriend Jaime (Phoebe Tonkin) gets busted for shoplifting. The police are called and as luck would have it, the officer assigned to the case is none other than Jamie’s own father (Martin Sacks). At the same time, in the car park underneath the store, a young couple are making out unaware that just around the corner a pair of robbers, Doyle (Julian McMahon) and Kirby (Dan Wyllie), are planning a heist. All of these activities suddenly become insignificant when a massive tidal wave suddenly hits the town and rips through the store, bringing along with it two great white sharks—one menaces the car park, the other, the store. If the survivors are going to make it out alive, they’ll have to figure out a way to restore power to the store and kill the sharks.
Once the tidal wave hits, any effort the filmmakers made at character development goes out the window. From here on out, it’s all about shark attacks and desperate attempts to avoid them. Since the major characters—namely, Josh and Tina—offer so little to latch on to at the beginning, Bait 3D becomes little more than a body count movie. Granted, there is sime fun to be in that, but it gets pretty boring and redundant quickly.
Things get really bloody during the shark attack scenes, using the old 3D trick of letting severed body parts float around in the water on more than one occasion. There are quite a few moments that offer genuine jump scares, given the surprisingly menacing looking sharks. On the whole though, Bait 3D offers nothing unique or memorable to the shark film genre.
Anchor Bay presents Bait 3D in 2D and 3D on the same Blu-ray disc—these comments will apply to the 2D offering. Presented in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the 1080p transfer is pretty good. Detail is generally sharp, though some underwater scenes make things look a bit murky. Colors do tend to look a bit dark, but that’s understandable give that much of the film is underwater. Black levels and color reproduction are solid.
The English language DTS-HD 7.1 Master Audio track advertised on the packaging is nowhere to be found. However, the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track that is on the disc is very good. It utilizes the entire soundfield very well, with bass kicking in when needed. Dialogue is clear and concise throughout.
English SDH and Spanish subtitles are provided but there are no alternate language options.
The only special features are a storyboard gallery and a standard def DVD copy.
