Piranha 3DD Review

Fun trash doesn’t have to be as inept and boring as “Piranha 3DD," In fact, it can be really delightful and fun. Maybe that’s why 2010s “Piranha 3D” worked with both audiences and critics as is still played by the generic formula conventions of horror, yet it had fun with itself. It delivered something not seen with movie audiences in years, and that was a “exaggerated, titillating, fun horror flick” that did have a shameless sense of pride within its universe. However, if the replacement from director Alexandra Aja who created the first movie without a brain and a sense of fun, then John Gulager has certainly done the opposite. Instead, he tries to channel his inner Roger Corman and not only created a “messy, sloppy, dopey and almost an insult to horror fans” film, he’s taken the gauntlet from this year’s “The Devil Inside” of being the absolute worst horror movie so far in our collective memory in recent years. 

Maybe 30 years ago, this entertainment would actually be great to watch and be accepted as a worthy installment of a so-called trend of “so-bad-its-good” type of movies, instead, Gulager thinks by flashing nudity and arouse the audience, he’s paying respects to the original. Which is why Dimensions Films shouldn’t have taken a gamble with a director delusional as Gulager thinking that’s what worked was the nudity in “Piranha 3D”. The screen is only saturated with the bare minimum of entertainment as the audience is forced to just watch screenshots after screenshots of  “boobs, boobs and more boobs” and unaware that people can go to the Internet for that. “Oh yeah, that’s right! This is a movie about killer fish!” Surprisingly, the first two-thirds barely have the piranha involved. It plays out more like HBO doing their own Lifetime TV drama with few glances of the poorly CG rendered of the fish and only trying to be cheeky about their presence early on with kills that overall never even makes sense, and that’s speaking about a horror movie.

But as the film begins, we pick up 1 year after the carnage in the first film and revolve around Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) who comes home for the summer to help her step dad Chet (David Koechner) with their water-park. Eager to make his businesses work, Chet opens up new attractions in his park that include an adult-themed section with certified lifeguard strippers (one can only imagine Gulager smirking at the idea). Meanwhile as Maddy meets up with old acquaintances that include an ex-boyfriend Officer Kyle (Chris Zylka) and Barry (Matt Bush) who secretly has a crush on her since grade school (Oh wonderful, we have a love triangle happening). But soon their park is visited upon the ferocious, flesh-eating piranha and Maddy must do everything she can before they endanger everyone in the water-park.

The insipid story and characters are just the beginning on how this train wreck became to be. Story telling doesn’t have to be complicated horror movies, especially if you’re trying to be an exact carbon copy of the predecessor, but with “Piranha 3DD” it manages to appeal to the lowest form of detrimental entertainment and passed off as a film. This feels like a bunch of punk rockers from MTV went out of their way with a budget and made a straight-to-DVD film made for the .99 cent bargain bin at your local car wash. Sci-fi channel producers are appalled this even made its way into theaters. All that can be said is the inane dialogue that must have been compiled up of movie quotes from IMDB’s bottom 100 list. It’s almost boring listen to these characters spout off the smirk, tongue-in-cheek dialogue like, "Josh cut off his penis because something came out of my vagina," that it justifies the question of "why is this funny?". There's a difference between being self-aware and trying to be bad; "Piranha 3D" was self-conscious  in that it took pride in its over-the-top thrills and comedy that it was clever enough not to try any harder than it already was. While "Piranha 3DD" tries too hard to set up the plot that really is trivial by the end that it wastes any precious fun to be had with and tries to put emphasis on these characters that feel as if they were cut out a Lifetime special made for dummies. The last 20 minutes, while have the tone of the original's finale, is a step-down in the range of gore, kills and entertainment to be had. If you can't even make a gorier or better finale than your predecessor, then you're definitely not even worth the thought of being seen.

Performances have never shined any brighter than the wooden, stale emotions that fill up the screen in "Piranha 3DD". Almost every actor can't elevate the shallow material written for them to any point of being fun or taken lightly. It seems as though this film decided to take the opposite direction and trying to be serious about a plot that is more depthless than the trenches where these fish come from. All that takes place in the screen for the first hour is character drama, love, betrayal, jealously that can almost be confused with the plots of even lesser horror films (although to be fair, those films had more mileage than this ever could). Even the regulars from the first film (both Ving Rhames and Christopher Lloyd reprise their roles) are reduced to sleep-walking than bringing any lively presence they brought to the first film (Rhame's prosthetic legs have more action going than his performance). The rest of the cast can be written off as Panabaker tries desperately to emote and bring any audience involvement while both Gary Busey and David Hasselhoff become more jokes than the trailers make them out to be.

If there could be any adjective to describe my frustration with a film that could easily been great is "infuriated". It's irresponsible for both studios and crew involved to think they can milk the audience for despicable trash that didn't have to be trash in the first place.
                                         
                                                              Rating: F by Amritpal Rai