company: Dimension Films
and The Weinstein Company
year: 2010
runtime: 88′
director: Alexandre Aja
cast: Elisabeth Shue, Steven R. McQueen,
Jessica Szohr, Ving Rhames,
Jerry O’Connell, Richard Dreyfuss,
Christopher Lloyd, Eli Roth
writers: Pete Goldfinger
and Josh Stolberg
cinematography: John R. Leonetti
music: Michael Wandmacher
Out in wide release now
Plot: Spring break festivities at a lakeside resort come to a relentlessly bloody end after a species of piranha thought extinct for millions of years unexpectedly resurfaces.
It’s worth repeating before going too much into things that I’m a huge fan of the original Piranha, the Joe Dante-directed John Sayles-penned Roger Corman-produced cult classic that took drive-in audiences by storm in the summer of 1978. After a dreadful official sequel produced by Ovidio G. Assontis and a limp mid-90s Corman remake, I was necessarily underwhelmed when news of yet another retread came across the wire. But contemporary cult powerhouses Dimension Films and the Weinstein Company have done more than just repeat that tired history, they’ve set out to unleash an indelible exploitation experience for the ages. I plunked down a hard-earned $13 and saw their film last night in all the gimmicky glory RealD stereoscopic projection has to offer and have to confess – it was one hell of a show.
Writers Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg and director Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension, The Hills Have Eyes ‘06) have crafted what may well be the perfect guilty pleasure film for people like myself – reasonably intelligent straight men keenly aware of their own affinity for sleaze. Helping things in no small way is my own issues with the drunken and orgiastic phenomenon that is spring break, a yearly tradition this twenty-something keeps at as much distance as possible. Aja presents the event with all the bawdy obnoxiousness of an MTV broadcast, but with one very important distinction. Both he and his audience know what the mindless droves of foamy-lipped and pie-eyed vacationers do not – that before the day is through, all of them will be dead.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Piranha 3D is just how well drawn it is from a narrative standpoint. Even amidst the unchecked debauchery of spring break the film finds focus, taking note of killer fish films of the past and zeroing in on the local sheriff and her three fatherless children. Characterizations are about as simple as one imagines they could be while still remaining effective, and Piranha 3D has us unexpectedly sympathising with the lot of them when they finally come face to face with the swarms of eponymous antagonists.
Having successfully granted his film a heart, or at least a faint pulse of humanity, Aja embarks on a film-long joyride into wanton violence and depravity, courtesy of a prominently billed Greg Nicotero (Day of the Dead) and a veritable army of visual effects personnel. Aja follows Corman’s all-important boobs-n-blood principles to their inevitable big budget conclusion, exposing enough in-your-face anatomy to make Russ Meyer proud and spilling record-breaking amounts of stage blood. Piranha 3D makes absolutely no bones about what it is and has a damn good time in the process, and it’s self-aware enthusiasm for old-school exploitation thrills is infectious.
Skin aficionados will find much to love here, from a protracted and physics-defying underwater lesbian tryst to a wet t-shirt contest that culminates with a screen-wide three dimensional vista of a mountainous rack. It’s safe to say that few other mainstream efforts have ever exposed this much flesh, and it wouldn’t have taken a huge step to have things devolve into pornography outright. But in Piranha 3D its the gore gag that reigns supreme, and Aja manages to blend his two favorite preoccupations with much success. An extended topless parasailing sequence is perhaps the best example, with an unassuming young woman dipped into the water time and again until her torso rises one last time, a mere stump of what it was before.
The main event, the much-anticipated descent of the fishy hordes upon the epicenter of the spring break partying, can only be described as epic. Aja is operating at a scale no exploitation artisan has ever attempted, working his effects crew overtime to dispense with busloads of unsuspecting tourists in as imaginative and memorable an array of ways as possible. An enterprising young porn star is reduced to a few bits of hair and a pair of floating breast implants while her director’s legs are nibbled to the bone. Another woman succumbs when her hair becomes caught in a boat propeller, the water around her churning with unrecognizable human giblets. Others are reduced to bubbling and bloody froth as hundreds of fish swarm about them. It’s human destruction on a massive scale, and the kind of splatter-happy mayhem that past gore entrepreneurs could only ever dream of creating.
I have to hand it to the people behind the scenes of Piranha 3D, as the project has real technical prowess. While the fish themselves are CGI, which plays well with the post-processed 3D imagery, the gross-out set pieces appear to be tried and true physical jobs for the most part. Nicotero uses well the lessons he learned working for Romero and Raimi in the past, and his work here (lots of gruesome lacerations, removed faces, dismembered limbs and worse) may well be his best to date.
This is as unapologetic an exploitation vehicle as I’ve seen in years and fans of the like should take note. I had a blast, even though the screen curtains at my theater were pulled in too far, compromising the image more than once and chopping off many of the opening credits. Just my $13 at work, I suppose. Obviously Piranha 3D isn’t going to be for everyone, and the squeamish need not apply, but those of you keen on this type of thing should make an effort to catch it in the cinema – I can’t imagine it being nearly so much fun on video.
