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Piranha (3-D) (Blu-ray)

by Anthony O'Connor | January 10, 2011 12:46 | Edited January 10, 2011 12:51

"...Piranha may just be the trashy horror comedy you've been looking for."

Piranha 3D is the latest offering from French horror director, Alexandre Aja. As a follow up to High Tension and the grueling The Hills Have Eyes remake it's a little disappointing. As a dumber-than-a-sack-of-hair, beer and popcorn flick it's pretty damn good.

 

Just to get it out of the way: the 3D is flat-out crappy and the CGI fish very cartoony. This is one of those 3D flicks best viewed in 2D. Digital shenanigans aside, the practical effects by Gregory Nicotero and crew are, on occasion, jaw-droppingly awesome.

 

Aja is obsessed with broad, unsubtle American iconography. The United States flag jammed into the head of a mutant in Hills... for instance. This time he's taking Joe Dante's Piranha and setting the fangy fishies loose on Spring Break - an American tradition Aja clearly finds bizarre.

 

There's a 25-minute long, all-out piranha assault that begins with a wet t-shirt contest and features an insane amount of gore - replete with stripped away skin, lost limbs and faces torn asunder. Before that we have a naked, lesbian, underwater ballet scene and copious nudity.

 

There are cameos from Richard Dreyfuss (singing "Show me the way to Go Home" and drinking Amity-brand beer), Christopher Lloyd as - you guessed it - a crazy scientist and Eli Roth as the MC of a wet t-shirt contest. There's obviously a lot of enthusiasm behind the scenes of this flick and, despite James Cameron slagging it off, there is much fun to be had. Unfortunately it feels like the third act was written over a boozy lunch break and the ending seems perfunctory and a trifle insulting.

 

That said, gang, you're watching Piranha 3D. If you were expecting the Citizen Kane of this generation you had it all wrong from the start. If prehistoric piranha fighting over a severed penis, chewing a porn star's implants out or munching on eyeballs sounds like your thing - Piranha may just be the trashy horror comedy you've been looking for.