When Bex & Dawn refuse to take the money offered to them after discovering the eye watering interest rate Jeremy insists that fees still need to be paid on the loan and is determined to get what he’s owed from them by means of vandalizing the stall,beating up Bex’s boyfriend along with threats against Dawn’s Mum (Rula Lenska) and 18 year old autistic son (Zachary Moore).
The married meek-looking little creep Jeremy while hounding the films leads insists on sexual favours too and seems to enjoy setting out to wreck the women’s lives on a whim which prompts them to increasingly desperate and violent methods to end the harassment dishes out by him. This is where the finale turns from the tone of British Northern Drama into a brutal gory exploitation movie with a blood drenched Smurfit in her underwear taking down the camel coat wearing red head psycho.
“Bait” originally filmed as The Taking well directed by Dominic “Paddy Kirk” Brunt (Before Dawn) from a script by “Emmerdale” writer Paul Roundell is a coffee black comic economic horror movie that harks back to the filmmaking style of “The Full Monty” mixed with the brutal violence in everyday settings that was present in Ben Wheatley's “Kill List”.
The films “Thelma and Louise” pairing of Joanne Mitchell who acted alongside Brunt in the long running rural soap also serves as producer on this movie alongside Victoria Smurfit who can be seen in various Hollywood roles in “The Beach” to “ Bulletproof Monk” opposite Chow Yun Fat both give effective performances which assists “Baits” mixture of laughs and gasps.
While other cast members you’ll recognise from British TV and cinema over the last 30 years such as Adam Forgarty who played the pikey hating bare knuckle boxer in “Snatch”, David Kear A.K.A “Charlie Chuck” from The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer and Rula Lenska infamous for her “catty moment” with George Galloway on CBB.
Make sure to watch the post-credits sequence by claymation splatter specialist Lee Hardcastle it's equally brutal as the film that preceded it. The review copy I watched sadly contained no special features.