Piranha (2010) Review

WEEK 5: SOMETHING SMELLS FISHY

Piranha (2010) Review

Happy Halloween! 

It’s been a crazy month of animals run amok, from killer fish and crocodiles to giant spiders and snakes, but now I’ve finally arrived at the last review for this year’s Creepy Cinema. If you missed any of the reviews, check back on my blog to find them.

Yesterday I reviewed the cult classic Piranha, and today, I’m looking at the remake from 2010 (often referred to as Piranha 3D, despite the 3D part not really applying anymore), which I watched before the original—at the theatre, in 3D, on my 16^th birthday, to be precise. I watched it with a bunch of friends, and none of them elicited the same response I did. They were generally unimpressed and thought what they saw was bad. If you have shown any interest in even a few of the films I’ve reviewed this month, then it should be of no surprise to hear that I love this movie, and you will likely agree with me.

The basic premise of a bloodthirsty school of piranhas attacking innocent swimmers remains the same, but this remake alters the setting and piranha origins enough to make it fresh and not just an imitation of the original. This time around, an earthquake opens a fissure at the bottom of Lake Victoria, which connects to an underground lake filled with prehistoric piranhas and their millions of eggs. This happens in the opening scene, where a fisherman (played by Richard Dreyfuss, A.K.A. Matt Hooper from Jaws) gets sucked into a whirlpool caused by the opening of the fissure, and he’s eaten by the piranhas. The story follows the typical spring-break antics on Lake Victoria, including swimming, drinking, wet t-shirt contests, bikinis, boobs, butts, sex, drugs, and all that good stuff. A local kid gets recruited by a director to show him where the best places on the lake are, so he can film his “actors” perform (and by actors, I mean porn stars), which he does instead of listen to his mom and watch his younger brother and sister. His mom also happens to be the chief of police at Lake Victoria, and has her hands full with trying to control the partying, while also taking a seismologist team out on the lake to study the seismic activity. The piranhas soon reveal themselves, and the lake turns into a bloodbath. Everyone is fighting for their lives as the ravenous fish swarm anyone in the water and strip them. Of flesh. Not their swim suits. Well, actually they do that as well, but more by default than on purpose.

The Piranha remake is one of the best killer animal films of this decade, and definitely among the greatest horror remakes ever. While the original was not overly thrilling or impressive, this movie is balls-to-the-wall and literally goes for the jugular. How it achieved an R-rating and not an NC-17 blows me away. I was floored the first time I saw it. Even on repeat, it’s still entertaining as hell. There’s partying everywhere, boobs left and right, and when the piranhas initiate their full-on attack, the carnage goes up to 11. I think they must have broken some kind of record for gallons of blood used in a movie—I know they dyed the lake red for some scenes, and they even tint the screen red for one shot in the opening scene. This movie has some of the most extreme and creative kills I’ve ever seen in any animal attack film, and many of them are not a direct result of the fish themselves. That’s not to say the fish don’t deliver. The piranhas are fearsome-looking and get just the right amount of screen time.

This movie could be easily picked apart on multiple levels. Is the plot original? No. Is the acting incredible? No (not surprising, given one of the main actresses is an actual porn star). Are the cgi effects for the piranhas flawless? No. But do any of those three things really matter? No! The plot works to deliver as much murder and mayhem as possible. The acting is above average for this sort of film, and a number of quality actors are featured, including genre-veterans Elisabeth Shue and Ving Rhames. Other lesser known actors fill the main roles, but visually there are no problems with them (that’s right Kelly Brook, I’m talking about you). The visual effects are fairly consistent, and there’s not an over-reliance on computer generated effects for the blood and gore. There are times when the cgi really stands out as looking bad, but that’s only because it’s in contrast with the shots that look quite good. The piranhas, which were designed by legendary creature designer Neville Page, look terrific—much better than in the original—and director Alejandro Aja takes the time to give them their close ups. He also gives many other things their much-needed close ups, in all their 3D glory. Catch my drift?

The main thing to note about Piranha 3D is that it never takes itself too seriously. This is a fun movie that delivers on the violence and sex and extremeness in a way not enough animal attack films do. It’s taken to the absolute limit, and even though there’s not a huge focus on the piranhas themselves, it’s still an animal amok film through-and-through. It’s never really scary, though it does try to throw in some jump scares and surprises. It’s the kind of horror that makes you laugh, because what you’re seeing is so extreme and gratuitous. From scene-to-scene, there’s always something entertaining going on. However, the second act ends on such a high note it feels like the action peaks too early, and the third act feels slower as a result, though it still packs in more gore and shocks and thrills. The ending is one of the best-worst movie endings ever, but that brings me to the worst part of Piranha 3D, and it doesn’t even have to do with the actual movie.

You may be aware there is a sequel, so it’s not really a spoiler to say this first one ends on a cliff hanger. I was really excited to hear about the prospect of a sequel, and when I saw the first trailer, I was a little confused. Turns out the piranhas in the first film were babies, and the adults are much bigger. But, in the trailer for the second one (appropriately called Piranha 3DD) the fish are all small. Weird, but whatever, I thought. It still looked like it would be fun and up the ante from the first one. Then the announcement came that Piranha 3DD was going straight to VOD. That was a huge red flag. I held off on watching it, then saw it on Netflix a few months later. I could not even get through it. I fast-forwarded through most parts, waiting for something awesome to happen, but alas, it was one of the worst things I have ever attempted to see. Nothing that made the first one great is present in the sequel. I could not spy a single positive thing about it. Even if you like this first one, don’t watch it. I can’t imagine what someone who didn’t like the first one would think of it. Pretend Piranha 3DD doesn’t exist. The franchise lives and dies with the 2010 remake, that’s all you need to know.

To sum it all up, Piranha 3D is a blast. It gives viewers exactly what they want to see and what they expect to see, so in a way it’s predictable, but in the exact details of what is shown is where the real surprises abound. It might not have as much re-watchability for some, but I still find it entertaining to watch again and again. If you can find it on 3D blu ray, that’s even better.

This concludes year two of Clayton’s Creepy Cinema! I hope you all enjoyed hearing about killer creature films—hopefully I covered a few hidden gems you’ve never heard of and will enjoy seeking out—and I’ll be back next year to deliver 31 more reviews, perhaps more of them in the actual realm of horror. Have a safe and happy Hallows Eve!

Piranha (1978) Review

WEEK 5: SOMETHING SMELLS FISHY

Piranha (1978) Review

Even though I didn’t review Jaws this month, it seems I can’t quit talking about it. It’s not too surprising; nearly every killer animal film owes something to Jaws, but the original Piranha may owe it the most. Steven Spielberg has gone on record as saying Piranha was the best of the Jaws rip-offs that came in its wake. It’s hard to argue with the masterful director himself, but is he right? Let’s dive in and find out.

The movie begins with a couple teenagers hiking up to a supposedly abandoned military facility and going for a midnight dip in the facility’s ice cold pool. They are attacked and eaten, and it is revealed the facility is not abandoned after all. An investigator goes out to find the teens, and she meets a loner/drunkard who lives in a cabin near the facility. He accompanies her to the facility, where they find strange experiments and evidence that the teens were there. They are attacked by the scientist who’s still working at the facility after they drain the pool, and soon discover it was a fatal mistake. The pool was full of mutated piranhas that breed like flies, were designed to live in cold water rather than tropical rivers, and have insatiable appetites, and they have just been released into the river. The fearsome fish make their way to Lost River Lake. On the menu are young kids at a summer camp and vacationers at a newly opened resort, and the drunkard’s daughter is at the camp. They must save his daughter and warn everyone about the impending danger, before the piranha escape the confines of the river and spread across the whole planet!

Piranha sounds like it could either be a so-bad-its-good creature feature or fall short and just be a cheap waste of potential. Surprisingly enough, it’s neither. This movie, while essentially a parody of Jaws, is a pretty accomplished B-movie that delivers on its premise and stands more on its own than other Jaws rip-offs, such as Orca or Killer Crocodile. The best thing about Piranha is it finds a balance of taking itself seriously and delivering as much carnage as possible, while also being self-aware and inserting much needed comedic relief. The dialogue is pretty funny, and the characters go beyond just the stock horror movie archetypes. The main characters are actually likable, and a number of the side characters stand out as well. There’s a goofy camp counsellor, an old guy who lives on the river with his dog (at one point getting drunk and telling the dog a story in a hilarious way), and a sleazy businessman, played by Dick Miller, who has been in all of director Joe Dante’s films. Joe Dante would later go on to direct The Howling, Gremlins, and Gremlins 2, among many other films, and while Piranha isn’t among his greatest work, it’s his direction that keeps it from being just a throwaway animal attack premise.

The piranhas themselves are shown very little. With such a low budget, I’m actually surprised with what they were able to accomplish, in terms of special effects. The piranhas are just rubber puppets that are always moving around as fast as possible, but the illusion that there are great numbers of them is sustained, and there are a few close-ups of them that look pretty decent, although only last mere seconds. The sound effect for the attacking piranhas is rather strange, and I’m not even sure how to describe it. It’s sort of like a trilling sound, but played underwater, with bubbles overlaid. It’s not really scary, but it’s kind of weird, and I guess it’s better than just having the piranhas silently eat people. Besides the piranhas, there are a couple bizarre creatures in the laboratory seen early on, but they never reappear.

After the opening attack scene and the two main characters are established, it cuts back and forth from their efforts to get down the river to the drunkard’s daughter at the summer camp. The plotline with the main characters is always going in new directions and is constantly entertaining. While these scenes, as well as the ones with the piranhas attacking people are great, the scenes at the camp are not as thrilling. His daughter is really boring—she never says much, is always pouting, has no friends—and while the camp counsellors are a bit more interesting, they aren’t usually the focus. Once the piranhas reach the camp and actually attack some of the kids, which happens at the same time the main characters reach the camp, things really come to a head and a bloodbath ensues. After that, the movie builds up to the piranhas reaching the vacationers and eating them, but it takes a while, and the eventual mayhem that occurs is pretty good, but there isn’t any standout gore or violent kills, and that’s what prevents Piranha from being a truly fantastic killer animal film. It’s not that the violence is bad—there’s actually quite a lot of blood and people getting ripped to shreds—there’s just nothing extremely special, which isn’t too surprising, given the low budget. But looking at it from that perspective, Piranha does not appear as cheap as you might expect.

I have to hand it to everyone behind the production. While clearly made only because Jaws was made (fun tidbit: after the first attack, the first scene has the investigator playing a Jaws videogame), it still offers a great deal of entertainment, despite not having aged as well as some animal attack films, including the aforementioned shark classic. It moves at a nice pace, delivers vicious creatures capable of real damage, has characters you can get behind, and does all of this on a very low budget. There was a sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning (well known for being the first movie James Cameron directed), as well as a remake from 1995. But, the reality of the situation is, all Piranha films pale in comparison to the 2010 remake, Piranha 3D. Clayton’s Creepy Cinema: Animal Mayhem will conclude with the review for that film tomorrow!

The Bay (2012) Review

WEEK 5: SOMETHING SMELLS FISHY

The Bay (2012) Review

One of the worst things that can happen to a writer is discovering a concept they thought was so original and so groundbreaking and would make such an awesome story has already been done. About a year-and-a-half ago, I saw a documentary on TV about tiny louse-like creatures called isopods, real-life creatures known to eat the tongues of fish, replace their tongues, and live inside the fish’s mouth, and I thought, wow, what a terrifying creature, what if that happened to humans? I developed ten pages of a script and came up with this elaborate plot, and then I discovered much later (and to much disappointment) that it’s already been made into a movie called The Bay, so of course I had to find it and watch it. While my take on mutant isopods would have been radically different, The Bay is a pretty interesting and chilling eco-horror pic.

The events are depicted in a found footage style, and I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing I was initially thinking: oh no, not another found footage movie. From Cloverfield to the Paranormal Activity series, found footage has become overused to point of being nauseating, but The Bay overcomes many of the tropes and takes a slightly different angle. Instead of being devoid of music, presenting impossible-to-achieve shots, and constantly prompting the audience to ask “Why are you still filming?!”, viewers are presented with a collection of footage from every video source imaginable (camcorders, phones, webcams, dash cams, screen shots, news reels—I think the only thing they didn’t have was drone footage) and the footage is edited to be shown as a film. It gives the movie a nice variety, and makes it more unpredictable.

The events chronicle the fourth of July at a seaside community on Chesapeake Bay, where scientists discover the water is contaminated, and people start breaking out with disgusting boils and rashes and vomiting all over the place.  Local doctors have no idea what to make of the numerous patients showing up with similar but unexplainable symptoms. The story is relayed by an up-and-coming news reporter talking into a web cam, and she basically functions as the movie’s main character, but there are several other characters followed throughout, most notably a young couple with a baby who go out on a boat and don’t discover the epidemic until much later, after many have died. It turns out the water is contaminated with tiny isopods, which are causing people to hemorrhage, lose their tongues, and go insane with pain.

The Bay is a very unique creature feature, and I think because it’s presented as found footage, has been severely overlooked by the horror fan community. It’s very much a body horror film, like something David Cronenberg would do, and the isopods are frighteningly realistic in their portrayal. The first time one of the isopods is seen, it is a truly frightening moment that actually made me jump and caused my skin to crawl. While the movie is slow to start, once the cause of the illness starts getting uncovered, it really starts to pick up. There are some really brutal scenes, and the gore is absolutely convincing, which makes it that much more unnerving. The editing is quick and it’s assembled in a way that makes it feel like a documentary, even more so than something like The Blair Witch Project. However, it’s not quite in that wheelhouse of excellence.

In terms of found footage, it’s not the best, nor is it the worst. The whole idea behind the film is this girl is talking on Skype and reviewing the footage the audience is seeing, and going over what she remembers about the event. While it’s established at the beginning the whole thing was a government cover-up and this is leaked footage that the audience is seeing, I still found it questionable as to how she, or whoever she is working with, got their hands on some of the footage. As I said, the video clips come from all over the place, but it still doesn’t seem totally realistic or consistent. Some of the clips, particularly a recovered video that is allegedly “water damaged”, feel a little too perfectly imperfect, if that makes sense. It was clearly touched up in post-production to make it seem more found-footage-esque, but just feels too altered to be real.

The biggest flaw with this movie is the main character. She exhibits little emotion, makes ridiculous comments, and every time she opened her mouth, it made me wish the audio would cut out. She has one of those fake, bitchy voices, and she actually diffuses the scariness from a couple scenes that start out unsettling and had the potential to be really disturbing, but then it cuts back to her, which is very disappointing. She gets ignored for a long while in the middle of the movie, which wasn’t a bad thing, and there’s more news reportage and interviews with the doctors in place of her Skype chat, which was mostly welcome, except for two other extremely annoying characters: the two researchers who initially discover the parasites in many of the dead fish that keep popping up on the bay’s surface. The guy is filming his partner, who is French, and he’s constantly telling her to speak with less of an accent and explain things better and do this and do that. He’s definitely more annoying than she is, but neither of them comes across as likable. All the other characters, while not standout, are tolerable and believable as victims in a bizarre seaside plague.

Given the concept, The Bay is not the amazingly original and terrifying killer creature flick I hoped it might be, but it’s still effective in making your skin crawl, and is mostly convincing in its attempts to appear to have been a real event. Not all of the characters are easy to get behind, the filmmaking techniques work to varying degrees of success, and I had problems with the ending, but despite these less-than-satisfying aspects, I still recommend checking it out. It’s an entertaining, modern creature feature—I just wish I had conceived of giant killer isopods a little sooner.  

Tentacles (1977) Review

WEEK 5: SOMETHING SMELLS FISHY

Tentacles (1977) Review

Tentacles was one of the many immediate attempts to capitalize on the success of Jaws, but interestingly enough, there are few references to sharks in this film, and aside from a couple “action” scenes and the whole thing taking place at a seaside community, it is comparable to Jaws in few other ways. The main way they differ is in terms of filmmaking quality.

The only two names that stood out to me in the credits were John Huston, who plays a news reporter, and Henry Fonda, who’s credited as “Mr. Whitehead”. Wow, that’s a real nice name for the Academy Award-winning actor in your movie. They might as well call him Zit. Anyway, the news reporter is sort of the main character (what do you mean sort of? I’ll get to it) along with his slightly strange sister, who has a son and looks after another woman’s son the whole movie, but at first it seems they’re both her sons, which was a little confusing. The reporter investigates the strange deaths that have occurred, which leads him to the oceanographic institute nearby. For the rest of the movie, it cuts unevenly back and forth from the orca trainer who works there, to his wife and her associates on a boat, to the reporter and his investigating, and then to the sister, who is taking her boys to a sailboat race. I could never tell what the main story thread was exactly, and as a result, it’s not really clear who the main character is. There are many peripheral characters with growing emphasis placed on them, perhaps to create tension so the audience doesn’t know who might die and who might live. In the end, I wished they had all died.

When I put on Tentacles, I was actually hopeful, and to begin with, the movie isn’t that bad. In fact, I thought the opening scene was great. First we get the point of view of the octopus in the ocean, right beside the breakwater. Up on the sidewalk above, a mother is playing with her baby in its stroller. She runs across the street to see her friend (an incredibly stupid thing to do, mind you, but that’s beside the point) and the whole time she’s talking, the audience’s eyes are drawn to the baby stroller in the background. Traffic passes by, and after a school bus passes, the baby is gone. It’s pretty well shot, and only a few minutes later, another one of the octopus’ victims pops out of the water looking decayed and disgusting, and it makes for a genuinely shocking jump scare. But then, the movie starts to go downhill, and Tentacles started suctioning the fun out of my soul, until I was as empty inside as the cadavers the octopus leaves behind. 

I’ll start with the short list of the remaining things I liked that I haven’t already mentioned. There’s a moment where the sister character is saying to her son that he should have her as a sailboat partner so they would definitely win, and the kid burns her with this reply: “We’d need a tornado to move the boat!” She acts offended, and then he says, “You’re plump mom, there’s more of you to love.” This makes her feel better, instead of upsetting her more. It’s random and pretty funny. Later on the octopus attacks the sailboat race contestants and eats the boys’ boat, making it seem like they both got devoured. Unfortunately only one of them died, but it turns out it was the boy she was supposed to be watching out for! Awkward! And then it’s never mentioned again. Lastly, the underwater photography is pretty well shot.

Now for the bad stuff, which is pretty much everything else. The dialogue is sometimes weird, but mostly uninteresting, and the dubbing is horrendous. I’ve seen Godzilla movies from the sixties with words matched more accurately to moving mouths. It turns out Tentacles is an Italian film, even though it was filmed in California, which accounts for the bad dubbing I guess. The music is repetitive, in no way induces scariness, and just plain sucks. There’s a scene where some people are swimming, and it’s established the octopus is lurking nearby, and the whole time I was just waiting—hoping—it would attack someone. The music goes berserk, the camera zooms in, there’s bubbles—oh man, here it comes!—but it turns out to just be his friend. And then, they use this same false scare again less than a minute later. I could not believe it. Nothing else, aside from that early scene with the corpse, is scary. The first glimpse of the octopus comes when it attacks a couple divers, and it produces a giant cloud of ink (which they only do to escape predators in real life) before eating him. There’s a strange scene later on where some other divers find a bunch of dead tuna anchored upside down on the sea bed bottom. I guess the octopus was saving them for later? Or did they all just happen to sink to the bottom in the exact same way? Doesn’t matter, it’s never explored in detail.

It takes well over an hour before one of the octopus attacks is properly shown. It goes after a girl on a boat, but the attack is short and unremarkable. This movie actually had a lot of potential, but it was all so badly executed. The biggest overarching problem is one that’s popped up in a few other disappointing killer animal films I’ve seen, and that is the issue of the characters taking too long to discover what is killing people. More precisely, people finding out what it is, and then surviving to tell the masses about it. Some movies can get away with delaying this if there’s other interesting things going on, but this is not one such example. I think it’s about 25 minutes before the ending that they finally catch on to the fact that an octopus is what’s causing the deaths.

Speaking of the ending, I have to mention how the octopus is killed. The orcas from the oceanographic institute are released on it like wolves of the sea, and the way they filmed the orcas ripping the octopus apart is by having plastic bath toy whales jabbing at a real-life octopus (which was dead before filming began, luckily) in a water tank. It is such a hilariously misguided attempt to make an exciting ending that it briefly pulled me out of my misery before the end credits. I suppose that’s one more positive.

Aside from a promising opening and a fascinatingly disastrous ending, Tentacles is not really worth your time. If you’re into older creature features or B-movies, you might want to give this a watch over Octopus and Octopus 2, but otherwise, I’d say stick with those ones to satisfy your cinematic calamari craving.