DVD--Piranha

or: B-grade horror that is B-grade.

One word to sum it up: Silly

While I sum Piranha up to be 'silly'-and it certainly delivers on that promise-I really, really enjoyed this movie. I should be bowing my head in shame, but with a 74% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I think that is okay. Look at it this way: this movie was never going to be great...in fact, it was a load of shit. Then again, that load of shit was turned into something so entertaining, and with some good actors (Elizabeth Shue, Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames...), it managed to pull off the B-grade horror it promised with style. And instead of being laughable, it was just really funny.

Every year, in sleepy Lake Victoria, Arizona, the population explodes to 50,000 for Spring Break – a riot of drunken fun in the sun for college students. This year, things turn sour. The lake sits on a crater formed by an ancient volcanic eruption, and when earth tremors causes the lake floor to crack open, scores of prehistoric piranhas set forth from the deep. Millions of these razor-toothed flesh eaters, with a primeval impulse to kill, wreck havoc upon the party-goers. A local sheriff (Elisabeth Shue) gets herself a group of helpers and risks everything to destroy the aquatic carnivores.

I imagine that this film would have been so fun to watch in 3D. It's cheap, and harks back to the days when 3D were more of a gimmick than an everyday thing. Given that gimmick, the death scenes are outrageously filmed, giving a more exciting and entertaining effect. To add to the outrageousness of this movie is the amount of nudity just thrown in, obviously selling the film to a younger male market. While this is undeniably the stuff that appears in the dreams of a teenage boy, if you can go in this movie without a critical head, then it is damn entertaining and pretty great. I wouldn't say it's the greatest horror film ever, but I'd go as far as saying that it was a really well made one, and tops to Alexandre Aja for pulling it off.


THE VERDICT: That was a shorter review due tot the fact that I wasn't being critical of this movie, because that's not what it needs. It just needs to be treated as a cheap B-grade horror and it will impress.

7/10