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Piranha 3D
B-grade horror set in sleepy Lake Victoria, Arizona. Every year, the population explodes to 50,000 for Spring Break – a riot of drunken fun in the sun for college students. This year, things turn sour. The lake sits on a crater formed by an ancient volcanic eruption, and when earth tremors causes the lake floor to crack open, scores of prehistoric piranhas set forth from the deep. Millions of these razor-toothed flesh eaters, with a primeval impulse to kill, wreck havoc upon the party-goers. A local sheriff (Elisabeth Shue, Leaving Las Vegas) gets herself a group of helpers and risks everything to destroy the aquatic carnivores.
In 3D and from the director of The Hills Have Eyes. Also stars Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) and Richard Dreyfuss (in a nod to Jaws).
Starring Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames, Dina Meyer, Richard Dreyfuss, Jessica Szohr, Kelly Brook, Eli Roth
Directed by Alexandre Aja ('Mirrors', 'The Hills Have Eyes')
Written by Alexandre Aja, Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger, Grégory Levasseur
Monster, Horror, Comedy, 3D | 1hr 30mins | Rated (R18) | Contains Nudity & Violence | Origin: USA | Official Site »
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The Talk
13 votes / No comments
Flicks review
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4
In this post-Avatar, ‘3D is the future’ movie world we live in, it’s easy to forget that 3D technology is the hokiest of gimmicks from back in the day. So it’s refreshing to see a film that embraces that B-grade ethos and uses the red and blue glasses to enhance some mindless fun that wears its exploitative heart on its sleeve.
The target audience is clearly the male youth market and they should appreciate the extra dimension in the extended spring break, as soft porn segments dominate the opening stanzas. If that sounds tacky as hell, well, it is, but it’s done in a tongue-in-cheek way that allows for some fantastically over-the-top, if puerile, humour. There are also some great little cameos, most notably by Christopher Lloyd as a mad scientist. All of this is really just a preamble for when the piranhas attack, and how, catapulting the film into so-bad-it’s-good territory.
The carnage is incredible, with each death more imaginative and bad-taste funny than the last. It makes one want to bust out play-by-play commentary but I won’t spoil it for you. I know that more sophisticated moviegoers will drop their monocles in disgust at how such admittedly cheesy schlock can earn four stars. Turn off the critical part of your brain, though, and you’ll find Piranha 3D stupidly entertaining.SHARE:
The people's reviews
9 reviews
Press Reviews
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Christchurch Press (James Croot)
Piranha embraces the extra-dimension, with French director Alexandre Aja hurling drinks, hoses, spew, outboard motors and eyeballs at the audience.
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Empire (UK)
3
Remember the film you hoped Snakes On A Plane would be – this is it! By any sane cinematic standards, meretricious trash … but thrown at you with such good-humoured glee that it’s hard to resist. It’s a bumper-sticker of a movie: honk if you love tits and gore! Honk honk honk.
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Hollywood Reporter
A pitch-perfect, guilty-pleasure serving of late-summer schlock that handily nails the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the Roger Corman original.
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Los Angeles Times
Piranha 3D is trying so hard for the laughs and the allusions amid all the gore, and endless bloodbath of bare naked ladies, that it completely forgets to frighten anyone.
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New York Times
The entertainment formula behind this short and nasty movie - devised according to someone's idea of what teenage boys with the guile, the facial hair or the "guardian" to gain admission to an R-rated movie are likely to enjoy - is sloppy and simple.
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Rolling Stone (USA)
Piranha 3D ends the summer on a note of shamelessly entertaining B movie bottomfeeding.
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Total Film (UK)
3
“There are thousands of them – and they’re pissed!” gasps biologist Adam Scott in Aja’s entertaining rehash of the old Corman classic. As fish food goes, however, it’s not especially filling.
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Variety (USA)
The 32-year-old carnivorous fish franchise has lost none of its bite, serving up a fresh batch of spring-break revelers for the fearsome creatures to attack.
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