Review of Piranha 3DD (2012) by Abigail C — 07 Jun 2012

I'm not sure what I was expecting in terms of quality here. Its predecessor could boast about quite a lot: it was funny, sexy, pretty, and the story made some kind of sense. None of that is true here.

This script must've been written by twelve year olds. Its dialogue is simplistic, moronic, and includes some of the worst exposition I've seen in a long time. Let's see how much information we can cram into three or four lines of dialogue as if the characters had amnesia, 'cause of course, the audience is too stupid to work things out for themselves!

The characters created here are pathetically bad, and many seem to have been ripped off from what the producers think they heard their nine year old kids say was good or funny. It plays into tedious stereotypes, such as the bad-ass black dude who 'saves the day' by shooting a few rounds into a pool, and the cocky blonde pretty boy who turns out to be a wuss. No need to apologise for spoiling the plot here. The lead character had no substance at all, no soul, and naturally, she was a marine biologist, of all things. Not only was she apparently trained in the only relevant thing to their predicament, but it never, not once, served to help the story... Not unless you count an awful love hint half way through which didn't need to involve marine biology in the slightest.

The story plays into age-old American horror traditions wherein having sex or just being young is bad, everything's a sin and you're going to get hurt for it. I really wonder what a horror film written by a Satanist would be like, and annoyingly I still have to use the word 'ironically' - it would be far more forgiving and make for a less predictable movie. Honestly this script could have been written in a day it was so bad.

It makes numerous attempts at comedy, and only one or two work in the slightest, only to be ruined by what immediately follows. There's a particular scene where the mood cuts from romantic love-making to creepy horror, lights and all change abruptly. The film tries to use horror or gore as a comedic device, but doesn't follow through with them properly, or puts them all in the same spot. The lesser characters at the end go through a series of deaths that obviously try to emulate Final Destination, but through their ridicule, exaggeration and poor taste, don't even live up to FD5. Pitiful.

The kind of humour you find here is even below the worst American Pie movies - to be honest, I'm not sure what to call this level of gag. I think only eight year old kids could find this funny, unless you're laughing at how badly the film is made. It can't claim to be funny because it's taking the piss out of itself, for none of the elements that classify it as horror or gore are exaggerated enough. Bad Taste or other excessively gory films were funny because they had far too much blood and guts. I have to confess that the one idea that I enjoyed was the virgin unwittingly carrying a piranha up her lady parts for a while, only to be revealed when she and her boy finally got around to doing the nasty. Bit of a hint to Teeth there.

If it's the women you were after this time, I have to say that once again, this disappoints. In the preceding film, there were a few iconic scenes, shall I say, and fewer characters in general, so you had time to enjoy the 'visuals'. The characters blended in together here so much that I couldn't tell them apart, and none were quite as pretty as the Brit in Piranha 3D, or had such a beautiful scene as the underwater filming. Take from that paragraph what you will.

So after ranting about how Piranha 3DD was neither funny, sexy, pretty or smart, I leave you with a reminder that this is not so bad it's good. It's so bad I wished I'd chosen another film to watch or just found some porn. One bonus half star because boobs.