Piranha 3D Review

Rating: 2/5

Fishsploitation movies (which is a genre) have been around since Jaws, but is a slowly dying breed, along with most animal-related, not Peter Jackson directed, not King Kong movies. "Piranha 3D" tries to bring back this genre, along with tongue in cheek shlock horror. Spoilers: it doesn't.

It's spring break, and the party is in full swing. Unfortunately, a legion of prehistoric piranhas have different plan, and orgy of babes, blood, and bad acting begins. Here is what the film attempts to use to make itself shlocky, and fails at.

1) Having silly dialogue and situations. The dialogue is just dumb. 2) Cheesy acting. nuff said. 3) An extreme amount of nudity. Actually, no real complaints here. 4) Cheesy effects. Instead of being cheesy in a funny way like in Drag Me to Hell, they're cheesy in a tacky way.

And finally, 5) An unbelievable amount of gore. This is where I stopped liking the movie. Because instead of having so much gore it's silly, there's so much gore it's just gross. Mostly because of how horrifically realistic a lot of it is. Also, the characters don't react like horror movie victims. They react like actual people, which is disturbing.

I don't want to see a sobbing and bloody woman crawl out of the water missing half her leg. I don't need to see the horrified look in a young man's eyes as he bleeds to death. I don't need to see a 35 minute long eating scene with NO CUTS in a supposed horror comedy. Also, the gore just feels like it's there to cover up all the other flaws.

Overall, I walked in to Piranha 3D wanting a so bad its hilarious horror comedy. What I got was a horrifically violent movie that didn't want people to realize how bad it is. When Eli Roth showed up in a cameo as a very funny wet t-shirt contest host, I actually started to have some hope for the movie. Then, a man's CGI "tool" is chewed up and spit out by two piranhas in front of our eyes, in 3D, in full detail.