Macabre…ish Horror Review: Piranha 3D

 

 

Piranha 3D, 2010/ 1 hr 28 min

 

While fishing, Matt Boyd (Richard Dreyfuss), realizes there’s an earthquake and the ground below cracks open, not only does it cause a whirlpool in the water, prehistoric fish pour out of the open crevasse. When Boyd falls overboard, he is quickly overtaken.

 

And during Spring Break, no less..

 

In the nearby town, it is packed with young people on vacation. A good many of them are on the water. Jake Forester (Steven R. McQueen), Sheriff Julie Forester’s (Elizabeth Shue) son meets an old flame, Kelly (Jessica Szohr) and her boyfriend, Todd (Cody Longo). And an adult filmmaker, Derrick Jones (Jerry O’Connell) asks Jake to show him the best spots on the lake for a project he’s working on.

 

Meanwhile, the Sheriff and Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) search the lake for Matt Boyd and find his grisly remains. They contemplate closing the lake but this is the busy season for the town and relies on revenue from the holiday. But then, the very next day, a cliff diver’s remains are found, the flesh also stripped from the bones.

 

Jake takes his siblings, Laura (Brooklynn Proulx) and Zane (Sage Ryan), out on the lake for some sandbar fishing and gets stranded. Luckily, Derrick is out on his boat with the crew and the kids accept his invitation to ride back in with them.

 

Meanwhile, Julie and divers who specialize in seismology, Novak, Sam and Paula, to the chasm. Inside, Sam (Ricardo Antonio Chavira) and Paula (Dina Meyer) discover a cavern, suspected to be a prehistoric lake and it’s filled with piranha and eggs. Before they can retreat, the fish consumes them. Sheriff Julie and Novak (Adam Scott) recover Paula’s remains and one super aggressive piranha.

 

Carl Goodman (Christopher Lloyd), a retired Marine Biologist, who now runs a tropical fish store. He says this species of piranha is 2 million years old and thought to be extinct. The only way they could have survived is cannibalism.

 

The sheriff and scientists try to clear the lake but they are ignored until the piranha start to attack. They are so fast and aggressive, these animals can remove the flesh from bone in seconds. The lake party turns into a bloodbath in minutes as students are stripped of their flesh so quickly, many of their body parts are skeletonized before they realize how badly they are injured. Many of them fleeing to the shore fully skeletonized from the waste down.

Everyone in the lake is either dead or horrifically wounded.

 

It’s going to take a major assault on the piranhas en masse to stop them. The Sheriff, Novak and her son kill a ton of them with explosive. But Carl has some bad news.

 

 

This horror directed by Alexandre Aja is an action packed, gruesome spring break thriller. It’s crass, not PC and full of nudity and violence. There’s not just piranha deaths but boat collision, tension cable and propeller deaths. The physical effects and CG are very good and sometimes over the top. Good, recognizable cast. Expect it to be graphic, gory and bloody. Also in the cast is Eli Roth and Greg Nicotero.