Piranha 3D [MA]

One thing about the movie industry that I really do love is its evolution and continuation of genres, both good and bad. You’re never wont for choice and movies cater to whatever dirty little craving you’re having. You want a testosterone-fuelled macho movie, here’s Predator, feel like a girly flick all about relationships, try He’s Just Not That Into You. A couple of nights ago, the mood was ‘a really bad and silly horror movie could be fun’, cue Piranha 3D. 

A remake of a 1970's post-Jaws movie, Piranha 3D plays to every marketable horror movie cliché, but at least this movie knows how crap it is and doesn’t attempt to take itself too seriously, which is why you can argue that it’s kind of enjoyable. 

Underneath a tourist lake that gets flooded with partying teens every spring break lies another, subterranean lake. When the crust separating the two lakes is accidently cracked open, it unleashes a mass of ravenous prehistoric piranha that then flood the entire lake and turn the spring break teen dream of alcohol and sex on boats into a bloody nightmare. 

Everything about this movie right from the far-reaching plot to the ridiculous CGI is unashamedly terrible. The whole point of this movie is not to treat it like a serious horror movie; it’s there to be laughed at and made fun of. This idea is clearly established with the opening scene, which is, get this, a Richard Dreyfuss cameo (cue tuba music and let the irony bloom)! From there, the rest of the movie is a collage of horror movie marketing clichés strung together. 

Aside from the notable, telltale underwater predator scenes, which cannot help but put you in mind of Jaws, the most heavily favoured factor here is the sex factor. Hundreds of ‘teenage’ girls with unattainable bodies and false breasts dominate a fair portion of the duration, prancing around either in scant bikinis or nothing at all. 

Then we have the ridiculous gore horror aspect with people being devoured yet still living long enough to scream and give the audience a gruesome image of a person with the flesh ripped off their legs still kicking and flailing. Whilst it is pretty disgusting, it’s quite overdone and the wounds and gore itself can’t help but look creamy and fake. 

Oh, and let’s not forget the ‘hero’s story’ that is happening alongside all of this. That’s right; a local teen dweeb blows off babysitting his younger siblings to work on a porn shoot, which somehow manages to rope in the girl he’s had a crush on forever. Of course, out on the lake they all get attacked and he has the chance to be a hero. A very weak story, but one that manages to plausibly work an erotic underwater girl-on-girl ballet into the film. 

Yeah, Piranha 3D is a pretty terrible movie, but its redeeming feature is that it knows it’s that bad and, with that being said, you can’t really get angry about it because of its awfulness.

Starring: Elisabeth Shue, Eli Roth, Jerry O'Connell, Steven R. McQueen, Jessica Szohr, Kelly Brook, Adam Scott, Brooklynn Proulx, Ving Rhames, Richard Dreyfuss, and Christopher Lloyd.