Bait

An enormous tsunami hits a coastal Australian town just as shoppers flood into a supermarket, turning a routine shopping trip into a trap. Inside the flooded store, people from all walks of life must contend with rising water, failing power, and a limited supply of air as the building becomes a shrinking death maze. A 12-foot great white shark slips into the chaos, patrolling the submerged aisles and turning the everyday into a deadly hazard. With time running out, strangers form uneasy alliances while short tempers flare and survival instincts push them to the edge, with no easy escape in sight. The store's corridors become a flooded labyrinth as the water keeps rising and the creature hunts through the aisles late into the night.

Directed by Kimble Rendall, Bait arrived in 2012 as an Australian creature feature built from an original premise by John Kim, Russell Mulcahy, and S P Krause. Rendall brings a tight claustrophobic sensibility grounded by a cast of rising stars.

Budget was $33,492,566, with worldwide gross of $32,500,000. That figure places Bait near breaking even rather than achieving the blockbuster returns that define big event horror, yet the film found a solid audience and some regional enthusiasm.

While not a major cultural phenomenon, Bait sits among Australian creature features that lean on practical effects and claustrophobic settings rather than flashy spectacle. It has a small but loyal following among fans of aquatic horror who value its straightforward, no-nonsense setup and tense atmosphere. It remains a notable entry for Australian genre cinema.

Critics called it a lean survival thriller that relies on suspense and practical effects rather than gore. The film looks at how people behave under pressure, showing cooperation clashing with panic when a common threat forces strangers to adapt and trust one another for fans of the genre.