WATCHED - Bait

Sometimes the hype is wrong, sometimes the hype is just hype, sometimes it can be more than just cool hip hyperbole. In the case of Bait it is very definitely justifiable. To recount the narrative would provide you with only bare bones of what this film is. First impressions within the first few minutes might be that you've stumbled across an archive movie from a much earlier period in British film history. Filmed in black and white with a scratched film surface and something curiously out of sync and off about the sound quality. It echoes films like Local Hero and its earlier antecedent Whisky Galore, in its theme of locals fighting back against incomers.Whilst owing a stylistic debt to early public service documentaries.

That however is where the similarities end as Bait never lightens its bleakness with humour, its story-line is set on taking a much darker turn Where it is remarkable is in its visual composition, editing, cinematography and particularly in its use of heightened sound to be both beautiful, dramatic and yet sinister in tone. This is a contemporary movie that wears its knowing references casually, confident to seed the present moment with foreboding flash forwards, the visual premonitions of where this will all end up.

For in this Cornish sea-fishing village Martin's worldview is out of sink with the changes going on all around him. Sea-fishing is being quickly pushed aside by tourism, yet Martin is prepared to fight back even though he can't even afford to own his own boat. The tourists don't understand the rhythms and traditions of a fisherman's daily lifestyle, they own his old family home and ruffle his feathers all the time. Martin's lifestyle has a gaping fissure developing right down the middle of it, that he wants to heal by returning things to how they were.

This fissure is given aural form by the dialogue being recorded separate to the filming bringing a disjunctive unreality to it. It's as if this were a nightmare or foreign film badly dubbed into English. It also allows the director Mark Jenkins to insert and heighten the smallest  noise, whatever he wishes. Sounds are allowed to stand alone and speak volumes, particularly in building up the tension or intensity of feeling a person is experiencing. This is brave film making, taking all sorts of risks by messing around with style, format and narrative sequence. 

Bait is currently available to watch for free via Channel 4 for the next month, or BFI Player and Amazon Prime to rent