Piranha 3D

Like yourself, I'd heard/read lots of surprisingly positive things about Piranha 3D, and probably much like yourself I'd ignored almost all of it, chalking it up to the fact that as horror fans we are all pretty jaded when it comes to mainstream, big screen horror. Sure, it may have turned out better than we were expecting, but really is that saying all that much? Well fiends, I'm here to tell you that not only is Piranha 3D awesome, but it's the most fun I've had watching a movie in a good long while.

Here's some things you may not know about me, I'm a bit of a movie snob but at the same time I'm fairly easy to entertain. For example, I currently follow these people on Twitter: Batman, Robocop, Cobra Commander, Darth Vader, Gary Busey, and Sharktopus, and yes I'm being totally serious. So, as you can see, it really doesn't take much. That being said, I still didn't have much hope of being all that entertained by the Piranha revamp. It's not exactly like the originals hold a special place in my heart, save maybe for the James Cameron (yes, THAT James "Avatard" Cameron) directed Piranha 2 and that's only because I watched it last year at my Memorial Day BBQ bash with a bunch of intoxicated fellow smart asses, and we had an absolute blast.

You get pretty much all you need to know about this movie from the title, Piranha. It's not thought-provoking, it doesn't have a classical score, and nobody here is going to catch the eyes of the Oscar Committee when it comes time for nominations. What you get is a movie about a bunch of college kids on Spring break who are attacked by a bunch of pissed off, hungry, prehistoric fish, and that's about it.This movie has beach, ocean, blood and boobies. LOTS and LOTS of boobies.

It also has some great cameos, and some surprisingly over the top performances, and they're definitely part of what made it fun. In cameo we get Richard Dreyfuss (who was once again in desperate need of a bigger boat), Christopher Lloyd, and an absolutely hilarious Eli Roth which literally made me lol more than once. Then Elizabeth Shue as the hardass Sheriff of the town, and Jerry O'Connell as a sleazy producer of a series of "Girls Gone Wild"-esque videos, ala Joe Francis. Ving Rhames was a bit of a disappointment as I barely remember him even speaking a word other than screaming "Get out of the water", although he did have one particularly awesome scene that I won't spoil here.

But the real fun, the main attraction here, is the gore. Oh my gentle Jesus, I haven't seen gore of this magnitude in one film in a very long time. For such a brightly lit, sunny, "good-time toned" film, when it comes time to get down and dirty, Piranha does so with no punches pulled. I'm being perfectly honest when I tell you I wasn't ready for what I was seeing. I completely expected lots of quick cut editing, thrashing about underwater causing an obstructed view of what was happening, accompanied by lots of air bubbles and water turning red. What I got were limbs being stripped down to the bone, hunks of flesh hanging from half eaten bodies, skin being torn from peoples faces. eyeballs being eaten out.of their sockets, hands with nothing but skeletal fingers showing,  and I could go on and on. And all this didn't happen to only a few people. Sure, it started out that way, but when everything went to hell and the piranha hit the beach, for the last 20-30 minutes this movie becomes a gorehound's wet dream come true.I actually debated on titling this post "Be afraid to go in the water, or your dick will get bitten off".

 To say that I came away impressed from Alexandre Aja's little homage to 80's horror films is an understatement. It really seemed as if everybody involved with this movie was on the same page, and just decided to not take themselves too seriously and have some fun with it. As long as you can go into watching it with the same mindset, you'll have the same experience. Or at least I did, and really, that's all I care about anyways. So there.