Piranhas. Fish that will, if folklore is to be believed (which it fucking isn’t) strip a fresh Bison down to its skeleton in under a minute. Legends tell of unwary travellers wading into the Amazon, only to emerge weighing significantly less. In 1978, a filmmaker (read: dickballs) allegedly named Joe Dante decided to make a horror film about said fish. It gained momentum primarily because of its staggering weight, coupled with the fact that it was cylindrical and tended to sit at the top of large hills. However, it also got big because it was produced by Roger Corman, doyen of the horror film juggernaut that was ravaging the eyes and minds of cinema-goers throughout the seventies and eighties. Said juggernaut was also known to ravage downtown Tokyo; a source of much consternation to Japanese cinephiles/people who didn’t enjoy being stepped on by a rampaging juggernaut.
The 1978
Piranha revolved around two teenagers (read: meatbags) going for a skinny dip (read: underwater sexy times) in a body of water closed off by the military. By the end of the film, most of the characters had been eaten. This was always depicted in an extremely realistic manner, so as not to cause audience members viewing the film to laugh too hard, or become so despondent at what cinema was clearly becoming that they resorted to taking seventeen minutes shits. The film ended with the trilling biting fishies escaping into the ocean (oh noes) and, predictably, credits.
The sequel, entitled
Piranha II: The Spawning was directed by a young James Cameron, clearly already preparing himself for the turgid weeping shrapnel wound that would later be called
Titanic.
Piranha II essentially preoccupied itself with having realistic fish hurl themselves very realistically at screaming women, who would then scream realistically before Cameron yelled ‘cut’ and everyone chose to take that as an order and, somewhat relieved, saw their heads off to escape the grim reality of what their ‘acting’ careers had become.
And so we arrive at the present day. Alexandre Aja, director of such gems (sarcasm) as the remake of
The Hills Have Eyes, has made a reinterpreted rendition of a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy meets cokehead, boy gets job on boat, boy's brother and sister get stuck on island, boy's mother is sheriff, fish kill things blah blah penis gets bitten off blah. It’s practically Dickensian.
The film opens with a stunningly awesome cameo from Richard Dreyfuss, playing a reincarnated version of his character from
Jaws. The film also features Christopher Lloyd being awesome for an all-too-brief moment or two, and Jerry O’Connell (even when playing a cretinous pornography entrepreneur) always floats my boat; partly because the first few seasons of
Sliders were awesome, but mostly because he’s a total Baldwin and I want to be in him.
The hero (of sorts) is named Jake. He is played by a young, pretty guy named Steve McQueen. No, seriously. Anyway, he’s been forced to babysit his brother and sister by his mother, the town sheriff (Elizabeth Shue who, I feel obliged to point out, hasn’t aged. It’s like she signed a pact with Lucifer. Or the Weinstein brothers). Around this time, he is approached by Derrick (O’Connell) and corralled into helping him location scout. He also bumps into a girl he likes, Kelly (Jessica Szohr). There’s also Ving Rhames playing the sheriff's token black assistant, which is pretty awesome, I guess. It seems sort of futile introducing characters you’re not even meant to give a ninth of a shit about... unless you ARE meant to, in which case you should probably skim back over this last paragraph. Probably.
Here is where the film begins to suck, although why it sucks is far more intriguing. You see,
Piranha 3D has pitched itself as an adoring hunk of bloody pastiche; a cheesy throwback to when horror films didn’t need plot, or character development. All horror films used to need were explosions, and enormous flailing titties, and fish that ate those titties. And within the rules of horror films, those kinds of movies work to a degree; they’re cinematic junk food, and are (were) unashamedly good at what they did. The last films to capture the reckless abandon of pure schlock genre fodder were Tarantino and Rodriguez’s Grindhouse moves,
Death Proof and
Planet Terror. Even the fake trailers sandwiched crudely between the films (
Machete, anyone?) managed to evoke the almost gutturally unrefined ambiance that was so lacking here.
Essentially, it’s like Piranha 3D was a hurdler who, coasting through the air, had a mild panic attack causing them to falter, catch their foot and faceplant into a bed of gravel and knives, and knives made from gravel. It’s one thing to pitch a movie as an ironic slice of classic, brainless horror, but it’s quite another to fail so dismally in that department.
In closing, a note on the 3D component of the movie. As the creators of
Piranha 3D have deigned to force viewers to split their viewing experience into a bi-chromatic duologue - namely a blue world and a red one - I have divided my conclusion into two segments. Both shall present an entirely disparate analysis of the movie. Try and guess which one is an accurate portrayal of my true feelings.
Blue:
The Odyssey, by Homer, is about man trying to cross the ocean to get to his love. No matter how many obstacles he encounters, he manages to overcome and conquer them all. Similarly, in
Piranha 3D, Jake must overcome many obstacles to reach his love, whether said obstacles be pornographers, or massive oiled mammalian protuberances, or a lake filled with surly flesh-eating fish. It’s a classic Euclidean formula: once you divide your adversaries into manageable components, you can reach your goal. Thus, Jake manages to whittle away that which stands in his way, and find his true love. It’s hard to argue with such a profound treatise on the adage that love conquers all.
Red:
Piranha was a gladiatorial arsefucking birthday party of shit. I would rather watch
The Hills whilst having someone knife me in the dick than even go near so much as a poster for this withered taint of a film.
One star.
*This star exists solely for Richard Dreyfuss and Christopher Lloyd, who are six billion times better than everyone and everything in this entire movie.
Piranha 3D opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday, September 2nd.
Words by Paul Verhoeven. More at
thevine.com.au.