Bait (2015)

Very disappointing...

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Bex (Victoria Smurfit) and Dawn (Joanne Mitchell) operate an organic tea stand inside a mall. They want to get their own place but need a loan. Jeremy (Jonathan Slinger) is a nice loan shark and Si (Adam Fogerty) is his strong arm collector. His victims tend to be women and old people.We see a lot of violence throughout the film, so they can thoroughly build the character of a guy who beats people up....don't make me hurt the puppy. If you have ever watched a film before, you have a general idea where this goes.Guide: F-bomb. No sex. Some nudity. Victoria Smurfit black bra/panties

Bait is a really cool film about debt collection in a small Yorkshire town, made by a guy who is in the U.K. soap Emmerdale apparently.What is very clever about the film is the use of women as the victim/aggressors yes there are lots of films like this, but it's all about the way it's done. It's supremely clever, with some really good sub plots, horrific special effects (in a good way) and some absolutely blinding performances from the two leading ladies, one of whom is very courageous as she spends much of the film in her underwear. I can't explain too much, but this film really is very well put together. It's not perfect, but what is? In the meantime is some very clever story telling, blinding direction and gripping action.

This film had the potential to be a gritty realism movie about lone sharking. But the end product is an overly long overly emotionalised meandering pastiche of This is England and Eden Lake with a bit of Essex Boys thrown in for good measure.And that for me is this film's problem, it starts off as a well constructed idea which then over plays it's hand. With less of the character building and emotional narrative supposed anchors; the autistic son is an irrelevant attempt at emotionally blackmailing the audience that fails.The only worthy piece of acting comes from Jonathan Slinger, whose Mr Nice Guy act is genuinely believable; as is his sadistic alter ego.The two female leads are so over developed in the start of the movie that they quickly become self parodies, more so in case of the supposed street wise and sassy Bex.This means that the well constructed start rapidly becomes directionless and erratic in both plot progression and plot cohesion. However, the saving grace is the sheer brutality of the closing scenes. Although gratuitous, the violence is held within context of story and ability of protagonists.Overall a nice try hence the seven stars

The first 5 minutes starts off okay, a little slow but good production value, decent dialog. It all goes down hill from there. 35 minutes into it and nothing's happening.Eventually, the violence starts, but it's so unrealistic and over the top, it's not believable, even within the context of the story.The violence is really fake too, with everyone getting beat to bloody hell, then walking around sporting a couple band-aids, like they are super-human. Sometimes, even the physics stand out as obviously wrong.This movie is frankly stupid. As it drags on, even the dialog and filming goes downhill, as if the crew realized just what a bad a movie they were making and gave up on it.Normally, I try to finish bad movies so I can leave a complete review, but with this one after an hour I had to fast-forward through most of it.The only reason I gave it two stars in the actors seemed to be trying with what little they were given.