Imagine this. Taylor Swift releases a bunch of new songs on a 78 rpm shellac record, and before selling it she adds some scratches to make it sound really old.
'Bait' is the cinematographic equivalent of this imaginary album. It's a movie set in the present, but made with the equipment and filming technique from a century ago. The result is that we see a modern story on grainy celluloid with lot of white flecks, and an image sometimes suddenly becoming darker or lighter. Even the sound is special: everything is dubbed, resulting in a certain stiffness we know from movies made in the 1930's.
It's a gimmick, and it's brilliantly done. 'Bait' is different from all other films you will see this year. And that in itself is a great quality. But is is the only one. The film is worthwile because of the gimmick. Take it away, and imagine the same story, filmed on an ordinary digital camera with great colours and good, natural sound, and it would be nothing special.
That's why the film didn't really appeal to me. It's not that I didn't appreciate the effort to make something out of the ordinary. I did, but halfway I wanted more than juist the gimmick. Also I had sometimes trouble following the logic of the story, and in my opinion the quick cross cutting scenes were a bit too much. If the 1930's style of the film would have served a purpose, for example in flash-backs or found footage, it would have been different. But now I was left with mixed feelings. I admire the audacity of the experiment, but I wasn't carried away by the overall cinematic experience.
