Its Spring Break time and thousands of teenagers have gathered at Lake Victoria for their annual spring break activities of swimming, drinking, and partying. Some distance away a tremor has cracked open the lakes floor, and has unleashed a prehistoric strain of piranha fish. These fish are hungry and they’re ready to devour anything they run across in their path. When Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue) learns about the razor-sharp teeth man-eaters, it’s a race against time to try and get all of the teenagers out of the water before the piranhas attack.
Meanwhile, her son, Jake (Steven R. McQueen) is also on the lake showing a porn video producer, Derrick Jones (Jerry O’Connell) and his group, locations to shoot his video scenes. With the piranhas approaching fast, will anyone be able to get out of the lake before it’s too late? How can the Sheriff regain order in time to get thousands of teenagers from out of the water and also rescue her own family?
Now I know a lot of people saw this trailer and said, “Why are they remaking that franchise?†I thought the same thing, but I have to say that it was definitely worth the effort. This was actually a really good horror movie. It had all the aspects of a horror movie revolving around the beach, partying, topless woman, and blood thirsty fish, just waiting for someone to enter the water. Yes there was an over abundance of nudity in this movie, but isn’t there always in horror movies. What I was more concerned about was how gory this movie would be and I have to say that it ranked up very high on the gore meter. These fish were tearing people up, to the bone. What also made this so much fun was that it was in 3D. Now I know I have complained about the overkill of movies presented in 3D, but this movie actually used the technology as part of the appeal. There were several times in the movie when the 3D was used to have things come right at you, as opposed to using the technology to just have the audience seem like their closer to the scenes. What better way to watch flesh eating fish attack, than to have them coming straight at you.
There is also a scene that involved a body part of Jerry O’Connell’s character coming at you that was pretty disgusting, but very funny at the same time. Ving Rhames plays a deputy in this movie. He doesn’t have that big a part, but he gets to go down in a blaze of glory. There was also a cameo by Richard Dreyfuss, which I guess was just a salute to the original Jaws movie, being that back in the days Piranha was the only other man-eating fish horror movie competition to the Jaws franchise. Christopher Lloyd also had a small part as the over excitable scientist who first realizes that they are from an extinct group of piranhas from the prehistoric age. All in all I have to say that this was a well rounded horror movie that didn’t disappoint. It also seems like they are leading towards a sequel to this film, which I anticipate will be just as bloody as its predecessor. I gave this movie 2 ¾ bites out of 4. Any horror enthusiast will have a fun time with this one. The movie ran 1 hour and 29mins. It was rated R for sequences of strong bloody horror violence and gore, graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use. It was written by Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger, Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur, and John Sayles. It was directed by Alexandre Aja. The film was produced by Intellectual Properties Worldwide (IPW), Atmosphere Entertainment MM LLC. It was distributed by Dimension Films.
The next time you’re at the beach, if you feel a nibble on your leg, swim fast, very fast. Ezo
Next Week’s review: TBD
