Bait (2015)

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

Now considering the budget of this movie was a tiny 180k this puts some of the movies that Hollywood is producing to shame. The script is sharp and the characters are well formed, a little too well formed maybe. The lead psychopath does an excellent job in luring the audience in with his charm, while disguising an underlying darkness that is truly reprobate. His counterparts play their parts equally well with a mixture of desperation and fear. Bottom line the story is very simple but there is enough thrills to keep your attention all the way. Would definitely recommend this. I'm sure everyone in the cast will glean bigger roles thanks to this.

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.

As a Calderdale resident, I went to see this film with some anticipation. However, I was sadly disappointed. It aims to be a thriller, but it is really a thinly disguised zombie horror film with lashings of fake blood and gore. The story is preposterous...a loan shark (aided by strongarm hulk) is terrorising shopkeepers/stallowners in a small town using extreme violence and demanding absurdly high repayments (even on loans that haven't been accepted)..whilst all the victims are too terrified to go to the Police. The violence is graphic yet cartoonish..appalling injuries are sustained, yet the characters appear in the next scene as if barely touched. The two central 'strong' female characters are an absurdly glamorous pair (neither of whom has a local accent).The underlying political message seems to be 'women are strong'..this seems to require that ALL the men in the film are either weak, leering sex pests, 'dickheads' or thuggish psychos. As for its portrayal of autism, this is unbelievably insensitive and stereotyped. Victoria Smurfit and Jonathan Singer turn in very convincing performances, but, some sharp witty dialogue aside, the film is spoiled by its uneven tone, veering from gritty social realism to black comedy and then running through clichéd horror/zombie tropes...a villain who refuses to die, bodies in the boots of cars, blood gushing from skulls (The title The Taking = a nod to The Shining?). Disappointing. Could have been so much better with a more realistic storyline and characters and a slow build-up of suspense.