A HOME-grown great white shark horror film will circle the world’s leading actors and filmmakers and put the Gold Coast in the spotlight at the prestigious Venice International Film Festival.

The first 3D action feature filmed in Australia, Bait 3D stars Twilight’s Xavier Samuel, Home and Away favourites Sharni Vinson, Pheobe Tonkin and Lincoln Lewis, Charmed and Nip/Tuck star Julian McMahon, Cariba Heine (A Model Daughter: The Killing Of Caroline Byrne) and a school of frightening animatronic sharks.

The film’s original storyline is certainly out there — a group of hot, young survivors are picked off one-by-one by a school of killer sharks trapped in a supermarket carpark after a freak tsunami hits Coolangatta.

“Their skin is silicon, so when the sharks chomp, it looks real,” Heine says.

The film’s good-looking young heroes soon realise they must work together to find a way to avoid a fate worse than drowning — being eaten alive.

Filmed in late 2010 at Warner Roadshow Studios and on location in Coolangatta with a large contingent of local crew, Bait 3D is described as Snakes on a Plane meets Jaws and Dawson’s Creek.

It will make its world premiere at the famed Italian film festival, which starts on August 29.

Expectations are high for the $20 million feature, written and developed by Russell Mulcahy (Resident Evil: Extinction, Highlander, Razorback) and partly funded by Screen Australia.

The Coolangatta coastline features in the film’s online trailer, which reveals all the hallmarks of a sharply shot blockbuster.