Piranha (aka Piranha 3D, 2010)

Posted May 24, 2012 by Speed - 0 comments

It’s Spring Break in Lake Victoria and youngsters all around are prepping for plenty of wet fun. Unfortunately, an underwater quake opens up an underground cave where prehistoric piranhas have been living for millions of years. With the bloodthirsty fish out, Spring Break is going to be bloody…

Sound and Vision:
Piranha 3D is a low budget B horror movie made to quickly cash in some money on the 3D hype, a bit like “My Bloody Valentine 3D”. As such, we get some cheap effects that look quite terrible in 2D and some scenes (like the underwater “ballet”) just look completely computer-generated. Add to that a major grainy intro sequence and you already know the expectations shouldn’t be too high. The colors are extremely bright and vidid, but don’t manage to hide the fact that the special effects (except for the piranhas themselves) look quite outdated. Nope, the image quality – even if this was all done intentionally – isn’t quite as we’ve gotten used to from Blu-ray.

The sound does its job nicely though, with good use of the surround speakers for adding some tension and good use of the subwoofer during explosions and such.

Extras:
None

Conclusion:
Piranha 3D is a remake of Roger Corman’s 1978 cash-in on the success of Jaws. The original movie wasn’t all too great but had a message about government experiments, greed and genetic engineering. It managed to get a cult status and even got James Cameron to make a sequel in 1981 about a flying breed of the Piranhas. Ridiculous, yes, but it got some fans

Now with the 3D hype in full progress and one horror movie after the other getting the remake treatment, Piranha couldn’t remain hidden for long and as such we get… Piranha 3D!

Strip everything that comes close to a story, add some cheesy 3D effects, plenty of gore, tons of naked titties and even a real porn star (Riley Steele from such movies as “Bad Girls 3″, “Bar Pussy” and “Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge”) and you’ve got an idea of what you’re getting into with this movie.

The plot has holes as big as the Grand Canyon, there’s plenty of known names in the cast (f.i. Ving Rhames, Jerry O’Connell from Sliders, and Eli Roth from Hostel) but they’re acting like they’re kids in kindergarten, and the jokes that are supposed to bring some comic relief next to the – absent – tension are all but funny. In fact, the only thing I quite liked about the movie was the Jaws reference at the very beginning by actually having Richard Dreyfuss as the first victim of the Piranha.

Still, maybe my expectations were too high, or I’ve outgrown this type of cheap-ass crap as Piranha 3D must have done something right. There’s already a sequel in pre-production, called “Piranha 3D: The Sequel” aka “Piranha 3DD”. As you can see, the makers still have plenty of comedy (and apparently 3D boobs!) in store for us!

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