Review of Piranha 3DD (2012) by Thegodfatherson — 18 Nov 2013

Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3D was hardly a masterpiece, but it was a real movie. It was well shot, featured some pretty great makeup effects and sported a decent amount of tension, balanced with zany comedy.

The film took the characters seriously, even though the horror spewing mayhem of the killer fish all around them was laugh-inducing. That was part of the film's charm. John Gulager's follow-up, on the other hand, has no charm, or class for that matter.

Piranha 3DD is an awful film because it doesn't understand what made the first film work for most audiences. Instead, it swaps sly political and social subtext for stale, shameful cameos, derp jokes and juvenile gags fit for a crass Meet the Spartans-type spoof.

Picking up a little while after the events of the first film, Piranha 3DD brings the killer fish to a wild water park run by a sleazy entrepreneur (David Koechner). And that's pretty much the whole plot of the film, which barely runs over an hour (sans credits).

The water park is overrun with the monster fish, and the final twist of the first film (that there are mega piranhas) is pretty much left untapped. The characters are meaningless, and there's not a likeable soul inhabiting a single corner of picture.

The film is gory, sure, but even the violence and mayhem isn't nearly as shocking, or amusing. It's just bloody and uninventive. The nudity also feels dialed back, which is bizarre given the film takes place at a water park patrolled by stripper lifeguards.

There's breasts and bums all over the place, but Aja's film pulled a few full frontal scenes, including a hilariously tantalizing underwater ballet. There's nothing here that tops that, nor does the film ever even seem to want to try.

And that's the problem with Piranha 3DD it's not trying, at all. It's just a shallow, muddy killer fish film with paper-thin characters, an insultingly boring narrative and lifeless thrills. The cameos are remarkably embarrassing, especially a seemingly drunken David Hasselhoff (who's seen better days).

The returning actors from the previous film (Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd and Paul Scheer who died off-screen, mind you) stick out like a sore thumb, too. They don't work in the world Gulager has created, because his world isn't logical, and it's populated by moronic stereotypes and unrealistic non-human humans.

Piranha 3DD is a terrible film, and that's a tragedy. There was room for a good sequel to Alexandre Aja's original, but John Gulager and crew messed it all up. What remains is pretty solid Blu-ray for a film that's barely even worth renting.