Piranha 3D (Aja, 2010)

[Spun Lepton]

Piranha 3D featuring ... Christopher Lloyd?! And ... RICHARD DREYFUSS?! Directed by Alexandre Aja. Looks nicely tongue-in-cheek. Could be fun.

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/piranha-3d/teaser-trailer

[MadMan]

Ever since I saw the preview for it when Avatar came out (I think the trailer for this was attached to that), I've wanted to see it. Looks absolutely stupid and hilariously bad, but I'm hoping that its in the same vein as the 1978 Piranha, directed by Joe Dante, that was a good, fun spoof of Jaws.

[Morris Schæffer]

That looks like a larf.:)

[Watashi]

HOLY SHIT! (http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4985427/piranha_3d_nsfw_sizzle_reel_in sane_splatterfest/)

This looks awesome.

[Dukefrukem]

That motorboat scene was fuckin dominating!

[Raiders]

Christ.

[eternity]

At first you just think the girl's top is sliced off...then she looks down and starts to slice in half. Amazing.

Adam Scott is in this? Okay I'm so there.

[number8]

This is the real reason he left Party Down. Cable TV is just not as fulfilling when you've already battled piranhas.

[[ETM]]

Ugh.

[eternity]

This is the real reason he left Party Down. Cable TV is just not as fulfilling when you've already battled piranhas.Spring break is a much better place than a catering gig to be asked if you are indeed having fun yet.

[number8]

Oh man, I was so hoping for him to yell that after the massacre in the clip. That would have been hilarious.

[eternity]

I'm laughing maniacally at the thought of this.

[MadMan]

August has this, Scott Pilgrim, The Expendables, and Machete coming out. Hell yeah.

[Morris Schæffer]

Hahaha, those nasty little fishies are racking up some really good reviews over on RT.

[Dukefrukem]

August has this, Scott Pilgrim, The Expendables, and Machete coming out. Hell yeah.

It almost feels planned.

[MadMan]

It almost feels planned.Perhaps.

Also I can't believe this has 22 fresh reviews already on RT.

[Ezee E]

Perhaps.

Also I can't believe this has 22 fresh reviews already on RT.
Aja is a capable director.

[EyesWideOpen]

Aja is a capable director.

He's made one of the worst horror films I've ever seen. So he's capable of something.

[Ezee E]

He's made one of the worst horror films I've ever seen. So he's capable of something.
Which did you hate?

[EyesWideOpen]

Which did you hate?

The Hills Have Eyes. I've also seen Haute Tension which was ok.

[Spinal]

High Tension is one of the worst films I've ever seen. I'm going to need some Match Cut feedback before I venture anywhere near this.

[MacGuffin]

High Tension is one of the worst films I've ever seen. I'm going to need some Match Cut feedback before I venture anywhere near this.

Seriously? Damn. When we disagree, we really disagree. Don't we?

[Boner M]

I'm with Spinal on this one.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I also hated Haute Tension.

I enjoyed this though. So much more bloody/gory then I expected.

[Ezee E]

I hate, hate, hate the end to Haute Tension. Well, I dislike most of the movie, but there is craftsmanship of a good director that he would later put to good use in The Hills Have Eyes remake.

[number8]

Mirrors sucked too.

[Scar]

I love Haute Tension, and The Hills Have Eyes was... ok.

[D_Davis]

I Loved The Hills Have Eyes (and it has one of my favorite scores), and I hated Haute Tension something fierce. This film sounds like a ton of fun though.

[megladon8]

Apparently there's lots of boobies in this one. Especially Kelly Brook.

Of course, I don't think filmmakers hire her for many other reasons. A thespian, she is not.

[Philosophe_rouge]

my review;

http://www.soundonsight.org/piranha-3d/

[Henry Gale]

Oh, the fun I had with this movie.

It's as joyously over-the-top as any horror movie I've seen in some time and even though most of the mechanics of the script should work horribly against it, it throws enough CG piranhas (which sometimes actually looking quite convincing) eating people in a handful of seconds to make the whole thing worth it.

It just kinda sucks that it depends on which actors are on screen to decide how deliberately campy it is at any given moment, instead of just coming across as consistently wacky one way or another the whole way through. You have Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd, Jerry O'Connell (and even Eli Roth for a few minutes) being given the the most ridiculous stuff to play with, and because of that their work ends up being the most enjoyable of the bunch. Then you also have people like Adam Scott and Elisabeth Shue who clearly know the movie they're in, but just play it completely straight, which in theory may seems like the way to go, but too often it ends up pulling the enjoyment of things back to the horrible Steven R. McQueen girl trouble nonsense that isn't enjoyable in any way. And even though Kelly Brook is only there to be gorgeous and to flaunt her body (even referencing her boobs many times in her first couple of scenes and showing them for much of the rest), she ends up finding a strangest balance where she's not quite being too farcical, but still managing to be charming enough that you care more than the average character whether or not she gets eaten by evil prehistoric piranhas.

So in the end, Aja just can't seem to ever keep a consistent tone with things or figuring out what exactly purpose the "plot" serves other than to kill time between the kills, the 3D really sucks (this being my first experience with a feature-length post-coversion), but oh man, when it's good, it's as fun as anything else I've seen in the theatre this year. The splatter reel they released spoils a good amount of the kills from the last third, but there's still some that really needs to be seen to be believed.

***

One question though, for those that have seen it:What the hell happened to Paul Scheer's character? I didn't see him fall off the boat or get eaten or anything, and no one I was with saw anything like that either. Maybe his death scene was really quick or too silly/unfinished to actually have in there. I do not know.

[Dukefrukem]

Piranha 3D sequel in the works already (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/46243)

[Skitch]

Enjoyable, horrible, rediculous, gory, stupid, really stupid, yet fun. Cliche, cliche, cliche. RIFE with continuity errors. I grade thee: indifferent.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I'll have to let this one soak. Suffice to say, it was about what I expected - Tremors as directed by the guy who pulped a man's head with a staircase in High Tension.

In the meantime, Rouge and Henry wrote some valuable stuff.

[Rowland]

Nope, didn't like it. The original is far superior.

[KK2.0]

it's in the same vein of Slither?


I love Haute Tension, and The Hills Have Eyes was... ok.

i'd put Haute Tension among the top horror movies of the past decade.

THHE has the incredible trailer scene, but not much else.

[D_Davis]

I love Haute Tension, and The Hills Have Eyes was... ok.

Hey Scar - wasn't Hills the film you blew a gasket on because of that dude who fired all those shots from a hand gun without aiming?

[number8]

All I remember from the Hills Have Eyes remake is that some chick gets sand in her vagina and screams for a whole hour.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Count me as another who hated High Tension.

[Scar]

Hey Scar - wasn't Hills the film you blew a gasket on because of that dude who fired all those shots from a hand gun without aiming?

Hahahaha. Yep, that is the one.

EDIT: At an unarmed target, running directly at him.

[D_Davis]

Hahahaha. Yep, that is the one.

EDIT: At an unarmed target, running directly at him.


Hehheh...that was hilarious. That scene was really, really stupid.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Took me a week, but I finally shat something out on my blog. I'm just going to quote all of it here, but, hey, the blog has pictures (http://horrorfilms101.blogspot.com). Fun.


This marks the fourth time this week I’ve sat down with the intention of addressing Piranha 3-D, the multidimensional spectacular that offers viewers the pleasure of watching a fish puke up Jerry O’Connell’s penis. It’s a genuine pleasure, truly. As are many moments in the film, some relating to the gore, but most to the actors wise enough to oversell this material. I’m thinking especially of O’Connell, Ving Rhames, and Christopher Lloyd, who provides vital information with such volatile bluster that it’s remarkable he doesn’t require hospitalization.

That’s not to disparage the sturdy contributions from Elisabeth Shue and Adam Scott, who don’t wear out their welcome as the sobering leads, mostly because of their pluck, but also because Piranha 3-D stays under ninety minutes, which is vital when you’re a movie called Piranha 3-D. Aja does his job mostly right, producing a zippy creature-feature that tries to both honor and kid its inspirations. Richard Dreyfuss gets a cute opener as an ill-fated boater named Matt, but his demise emphasizes speed and carnage instead of suspense. Message received: this film is not Jaws.

Unfortunately, Piranha 3-D is also not an even film, which hurt my earlier efforts to write a more unified review. No matter the mood, no matter my approach, I kept lapsing into discordant asides. “This works.” “This part was stupid.” “Was Paul Scheer’s death lost in the editing room?” Stray observations for a film full of stray events. Fast as it is, the film is sloppy and unfocused. Easy example: Shue’s steadfast policewoman vies for main character status with Jerry O’Connell’s sleazeball producer and Steven R. McQueen’s Jake, the teenager chasing his unrequited crush. Who’s our hero? However, there’s a more complicated example here that aggravates me. There’s too much gore.

Specifically, there’s too much gore, and it does not work with this subject. The film’s non-piranha scenes suggest lighter fare, like Tremors and Gremlins, with the colorful townsfolk confronting an invasion of chittering beasts. Piranha 3-D even thieves its police-mom/frustrated-child dynamic from the underrated Eight Legged Freaks – another film that incongruously gave ferocious animals light-hearted chirping sounds. Of course, that worked with Freaks’s cartoon attitude, where the spiders did double-takes and the deaths were bloodless.

Here, Aja angles for the dread of inevitable carnage, rather than the suspense of threat and escape. One sequence has a woman (topless, natch) parasailing, legs dipping in and out of the water. It isn’t enough to see the water bubble and hear her scream. It is imperative that she rise back up, breasts flopping, body nearly shorn at the waist, blood streaming down. Another sequence has a broken wire slice a woman in half. The emphasis stays on the gore, and, again, it’s not enough to see her top half slide off. We must see also it fall through the lake’s water, blood billowing into the murk. Piranha!

To be fair, I thought some of the gore was clever, and some of the deaths felt righteous (O’Connell’s especially), but then we get hit by a scene where children watch a nearby woman fall slowly into the lake, pulled by her hair, becoming chum for a feeding frenzy. Aja likely understands the disconnect, which is why he tries to ignore it and power through the scene. Compare these scenes to the early films of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, who balanced their horror-coms by amping the gore to the point of surreality. That might’ve made this film cohesive and impressive. Aja loves his gore effects too much, to the point that horror makeup guru Greg Nicotero cameos as a survivor helping people out of the lake.

Much of the method here reminds me of Aja’s background as a horror director from the so-called New French Extremity. This loose “movement” includes boundary-breaking pictures like Martyrs, Frontieres, Inside, and Aja’s own High Tension. The films couch themselves in unheard-of sights and visions of body horror, from live flaying to skin melting to Aja, in Tension, reducing a man’s head to pulp, using only a stairway and a bookcase (the lesson: don’t buy books). Some of these films have the substance to support the envelop-pushery. Martyrs and Trouble Every Day have especially compelling undercurrents.

Piranha 3-D doesn’t, conflating its breasts, boobs, and boneheads into an energetic mishmash of goals and interests. Yeah, it’s energetic. It’s fascinating in its Jekyll/Hyde personality. It'll make horror fans think a bit about the nature of gore, its pros and cons. The flick's worth seeing...but I would never call it successful.

Especially not the 3-D. The in-your-face cheapness (self-aware, to be sure) was obvious and trite and flat and it gave me a headache. I’ve actively disliked the current 3-D fad, with the inflated prices and the failure to elicit any sensation greater than “Ooh, look at the depth!” Even so, Cameron’s Avatar never gave me a headache, which occurred during Piranha 3-D, to the point that I frequently took-off the glasses, mid-frenzy, and closed my eyes. I don’t think I missed much – I could hear the screams and chirps just fine.

[Dukefrukem]

Maybe it was the hype, but this was not as fun as I was hoping for. Sure the Christopher Lloyd scene was goofy and the opening with Richard Dreyfuss was cute, but the story was just shit. Hard for me to stay focused. I realize it's supposed to be a stupid T&A movie but I didn't find it campy at all. Shooting shotguns into the ocean is cheese.

The best scene:

Hair caught in propeller

[Spun Lepton]

There was hype?

[Dukefrukem]

Well a bunch of people in here praised the movie saying it was fun. It made close to $100 mil ww which is crazy for a movie like this...

[Spun Lepton]

Lines like, "Wet t-shirt ... uurgghh ... wet .... t-shirt ....." and you didn't find it campy?

[Rowland]

Yep, it's lame. The sequel is even worse.

[Spun Lepton]

Sorry, Duke. Was trying to joke around. Doesn't come across very well via text. That said I thought it was passable, empty entertainment.