The Lords of Salem (2012)

Plots are actually kind of overrated. Hell, why bother having one at all when you can just have weird images and lots of screaming? For a horror director, this is almost essential now, as we all know the best plots were either used in the past or stolen from our minds by alien probes. Those are really the only two options, so it's better not to even try. So who else can save us from this plight but Rob Zombie? I mean, if you can't trust movies made by the equivalent of your high school bully who used to shove your head in a toilet, you can't trust anybody, man.

Director: Rob Zombie

Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips

IMDb

Co-written with The Observer and Michelle.

This was the last Rob Zombie film as of this writing, and no one really saw it because who would, after seeing the Halloween remakes he did? As much as I hate to admit it though, this is a better movie than either of those remakes, even if only by a little bit. But that won't stop me from making fun of it!

We start this off with a bunch of witches in the 1600s screaming and cackling, because when Tumblr hasn't been invented yet, I guess you gotta entertain yourself somehow.

"Look at my hands! They're somehow the only part of my body that's clean!"

This goes on for waaaay too long, but fortunately after that we get introduced to our main character, Sheri Moon Zombie.

Literally the first shot you see of her; I am not kidding.

Boy, he really isn't wasting time, is he? Two Rob Zombie cliches in the first five minutes – his wife, and his wife's naked ass.

She's playing Heidi, a radio DJ who has a dog, I guess. That's about the extent of her character. I guess the story is that she sees a weird figure across the hall from her at the apartment she thought was abandoned – what? A character in a horror movie sees something that might be just in her mind? Stop the presses!

But what is the dialogue like? Will it be a flurry of swearing like in every other movie he's done? Well, the first human interaction is with the old lady landlord who Heidi asks about the figure she saw in the other apartment. The landlord responds no, there's no one in there, but she's just glad she got rid of the last tenant who lived there, who “was a dog,” she says. Then she reaches down and pats Heidi's dog and says “no offense,” you know, just to make sure she isn't stepping on any toes.

"Rrruuuffff! Too late! Offense taken!"

Well, I'm convinced. Heidi goes to work and hangs out with another Ken Foree role and this other guy, who I'm pretty sure is getting ready to join ISIS. Even if he isn't, though, I'm positive he can't get through airport security quick enough to catch his flight.

These three are apparently a bunch of radio hosts who do silly things like play sound effects and have conversations with each other! Oh wait...those are normal things radio hosts do. Well, shit. I guess they get a strange vinyl record in the mail for Heidi, which turns out to be this weird noise that makes Heidi uncomfortable to listen to.

But that isn't a big deal for now. For now it's time for Heidi and Mr. Beardo over there to hang out at her house and re-enact scenes you've seen in every indie comedy flick:

Oh yeah, dance party in a horror movie! That sets the mood.

And it may look like she's cooking something, but don't be fooled – she's just swirling that beige-colored slop around to give the appearance of cooking.

The next night she comes home and winds up hanging out with her landlord's sisters, one of whom is a palm reader who I'm sure will be living in a shitty motel working at a Circle K in a year...I mean, she flat out says most of the lines on Heidi's palm don't mean anything to her and she only looks at one of them. Isn't that like being a math teacher and refusing to teach anything above sixth-grade-level multiplication? Somehow I don't think there are thick enough cloaks and mirrors in the world to hide that much bullshit. She tells Heidi to get in touch with her dark, sexual side or some bullshit like that.

Yes, get in touch with your dark, sexual side - palm reading psychics are kind of like issues of Cosmo after all.

I also love the landlord's exasperated cry of “you need to stop overdoing that psychic act; it's annoying!” after Heidi leaves. Yeah, I guess annoying would be one word to describe it. Maybe they should hire this lady to be casting director for Rob Zombie's other movies. She could just sit there and call every other performer in House of 1,000 Corpses annoying. And in Halloween II she could probably just kill Rob Zombie and improve the movie.

On the show, they interview an old man who's written a book about witches. They ask him if there were any “real witches,” sort of as a joke, and he answers, very deadpan, that there are no such things as real witches.

"There's also no such thing as the Easter bunny."

Wellp, that settles that! Movie over.

Later on, Heidi has a very surreal nightmare in which she goes into the room from Se7en and finds this:

Man, the previous tennants left half a can of butter, a roll of toilet paper and their giant glowering angry red cross. How inconsiderate.

Riveting. Then outside, in a hallway that already looks like it's out of The Shining, she runs into a grimy, naked old lady who looks like she also belongs in The Shining.

Bah, she's just part of the nudist convention going through town at the time. No biggie!

Then Heidi goes to a church the next day, intending to have a quiet and reflective day with her neglected ole' buddy J.C., but the priest shows up and starts talking to her instead. How is it in these movies that there's always a priest hanging around an empty church even when there's nothing going on? Don't they ever do anything else? Do they go out to buy groceries and chain-link-fence the church up until they get back?

"Why are you in here at any random time the protagonist in these movies come into a church?"
"Simple, my child - I am bound by blood to stay in this church forever."
"..."
"Yes, it's really quite horrific and depressing."

Anyway, conversation with the priest turns into a rape scene, which is such low-hanging fruit I could probably grab it from here in stupid old Florida, but I'm not going to.

Use your imagination...

After that, it's time for exposition, with that old man who they had on their radio show, who is suspicious of things going on because the script needs someone to investigate witches and shit like that. How do you think this went in the writers' room?

“Rob, I know you wanted this to be nothing but psychedelic brain-fucking imagery, but I really can't even tell what's going on, and I'm supposed to be the scriptwriter! I think we need to shoehorn in some kind of exposition-y plot device!”

“I think it's good the way it is. I always wanted to make a movie with nothing but naked witches and images I saw while half-dead in a drugged stupor. I'm fulfilling my dream!”

“Yeah, but we already hired Bruce Davison for the role! That'd be a lot of wasted money otherwise.”

“...alright, throw in some really generic scenes where he discovers stuff about the witches in the past being related to Heidi. That ought to be good enough, right?”

“Eh, sure. Why not?”

The problem with this, of course, was the obvious – the conversation just took place between Zombie and the drunken ghost of what remains of his own conscience. He was just sitting in an empty room talking to himself there.

After that shit is over and you're falling asleep, we get scenes of Heidi getting sicker and sicker and going home to get pushed around in a wheelchair by the three witch sisters who run the place.

Now they can skip the lines at Disney.

They take her back to that creepy Se7en-style room, only this time it's actually the palace Versailles, apparently. Heidi somehow has corpse paint on like she's in the worst ICP cover band in the world, and gives a double-handjob, I guess, to the appendages of a Cthulhu-like monster which we never really see.

That's the same face the entire audience has after watching the rest of the movie, too!

Apparently, this is her tipping point into madness, as she then spends all her time half-asleep on the couch, unable to move. Oh please, this is just what people do after a bad breakup. I'm not impressed. It would be more intimidating if she just reverted to her past life and started making women slap each other for the chance to go to the bathroom.

That bearded dude calls a few times, and has a sort of incoherent conversation with Heidi about their sort-of romance going on, which might be compelling if we really knew anything about either character. But I guess that wasn't the important part of the film.

We also get this scene, where Mr. Exposition Man comes over to try and figure out what's going on. He was smart enough to find out Heidi was related to the witches from the past, but apparently his Sherlock Holmes powers ran out there, as he doesn't seem to have a clue that the three old ladies are the bad guys here. "I mean, they act about as subtle as a clown wielding a machete, but fuck, I was totally surprised!"

Is it any surprise that they kill him afterward? Oh, and they don't do it with magic witch powers or anything cool like that. They just beat him to death with a frying pan, and no, I am not joking.

"Why did we put that cloth over his face anyway? It's not like anyone's going to come in here right this moment. I mean it's a movie - that would never happen."
"Sssshhhh...."

Oh well. Farewell character we won't ever remember the name of!

Beard-O takes Heidi out to this concert of the “Lords of Salem” band, who we never really see. Or we do see something, if watching a drug-fucked psychedelic orgy on screen counts as actually watching a band play. Seriously, I think some of these images are what hardcore right-wing Christians think the rest of us are doing on weekends.

It's cool to act like you're riding a bucking bronco when you're really just sitting on a goat who doesn't care.

Boy, Gene Simmons is hard up for cash these days.

Worst Eyes Wide Shut party ever.

There are also some more scenes of fire and naked witches and babies covered in blood and all kinds of shit. Then we see Heidi can really rock those white contact lenses they sell at the Halloween discount costume store. And that's just kinda the end of the movie. Hooray?

"Oh yeah, raided the $1 bin at K-Mart, now we're ready to trick or treat!"

Oh, well we do get a few "flashback" style scenes with her playing with the dog.

Now I see the point: the dog was the main character of the movie all along!

This was...well, better than most of Zombie's other movies. It at least tried some new things here and there, and it did show that he can write other things than rednecks and people screaming at each other, or Venn diagrams of the two things overlapping. This at least tried to set up a bit of character and atmosphere, and I did like the lightning, colors and visuals of it all – it was a very nice looking film full of spooky Halloween-esque ambiance, so that was fun.

The problem was that it just wasn't really a movie so much as a collection of cool looking images. It was kind of like a scrapbook of images from the mind of a character from a Dario Argento film. Zombie was definitely going for that vibe here – that super old school, retro vibe trying to imitate Suspiria, Inferno or any number of Lucio Fulci flicks, as well as The Shining for that matter. But it just didn't have any kind of real story to it. Everything that happened just felt incidental – like, oh, really, Heidi was a descendant of these witches and somehow never moved away from Salem for all these years? And she just so happened to be in the right places (the radio station, her apartment with the witches as landlords) for all this weird shit to happen to her? Well, what a small world after all!

The movie ends before we really get any sense of purpose behind what happened. There isn't really enough meat on the bones of this story to carry it beyond “curious” to actually good...the Fulci and Argento flicks, despite being similarly fever-dream-induced like this, at least had a sense of flow and narrative to them, and characters that kinda moved the story along. Here, once Heidi gets under the spell of these witches, or whatever it is that happens to her, the story stops cold and it just starts being about creepy imagery rather than a creepy story. That's the real difference here. For a similar but better modern horror movie, I'd really recommend House of the Devil.

But eh, at least this would probably be good if you watched it while high off your ass. Which is the real barometer for quality of any movie, when you think about it.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Mine Games (2012)

In the oversaturated realm of movies about haunted mines, there are many ways you can draw the audience's attention. And in terms of THAT, Mine Games is a failure. Why? Because it's called Mine Games, and as we all know, mines are no game. Mines are serious business. They're the most serious thing. So serious, you can go crazy inside them.

Or so says this movie.

Director: Richard Gray

Starring: Alex Meraz, Briana Evigan

IMDb

This movie starts us off on a high note with a bunch of annoying characters exchanging horrible dialogue while driving to a soundtrack of shitty 2000s pop music. Oh, did I say high note? I meant incredibly lowest common denominator possible.

Their story is, they're on a trip to somebody's house in the woods. They stop in a field to re-enact their favorite scenes from The Room before they pile back in the car like a few minutes later to keep on going.

I guess he must weigh like 75 pounds if that football bowled him over like that. He should definitely get really fat so it never happens again. Or just hang out with Tommy Wiseau more.

I guess the one slight sliver of plot we get here is that one of the guys, Michael, has stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication. Even though the film doesn't seem to understand that not taking medications like that is a pretty serious deal, we get the storyline foraging ahead anyway, like a dumb explorer stumbling onto a minefield – suffice to say, no, taking anti-psychotic meds DOESN'T mean you're suppressing your inner killer which will emerge and lead you to slaughter your friends the second you stop.

"Please don't look at my creepy face and assume I'm the killer!" 

They almost crash into a guy in the middle of the road and end up breaking down not too long after. It's OK, though, as they can just walk right from that to the house they were looking for – it's confusing, as it seems a bit like they're lost at first, but then they find the place they wanted in a few minutes or so. It's really just an example of the movie feeling unfinished – several parts of the script just taper off unfocused, like an unfinished suicide note, so then you're just kinda left wondering, forever gazing into that starry black void.

It's cool, though. We got partying and sex scenes out the ass!

Smiling and holding a glass = having fun.

I'm glad we get to see the director's attempt at a porno shoved awkwardly into this horror movie. That really rounds it out and makes it a solid film!

Alright! Now that's how you develop character. Glad somebody's still doing it right!

The next day they do what most kids their age do – go hang out in the old abandoned mine conveniently right down the road from them. I'll give the movie credit for not spending an ass-load of time in there, and also for not having them get stuck for the rest of the movie. But I also take away credit for a scene where they lock Michael up in a room where he almost gets stuck.

Ah yes...the old 'lock him in a mine' trick. It's a gut buster and a great story to tell at parties...if you have no brain.

And also for the scene where these two idiots think they're running in a circle after eating mushrooms, then get lost...fortunately they don't get TOO lost, but even so, the one guy trying to get the chick to make out with him is a bit out of place. “Hey, don't you get turned on by creepy old abandoned mines we might die in?!”

"But this is where I take all my girlfriends!"

I'm really just waiting for them to run into the actual miners who were just on break. They'd be goofing off in here, then the actual miners would show up and be like “hey, what are you assholes doing in here?” And that would be that. Maybe add in some misdemeanor criminal charges, a little bit of fines and disappointing glares from their parents and relatives that would have been there anyway given how these characters acted beforehand. But that's wishful thinking I suppose.

That one girl, Rose, is apparently a psychic – because the movie didn't know how else to convey its plot. She spends the rest of the film after this sick and in bed because of some scratches on her foot. 

It ain't her fault she ran into Wolverine in that damn mine...

All I can say is, either you gave this chick some bad 'shrooms, or she maybe shouldn't ever be in the same hemisphere as drugs again if THIS is how she reacts! Goddamn, right?

The others are truly broken up about this, as we see them working through their grief with a game of pool – but it's okay; it's existential, deep pool used to work through their own stress and insanity. That's the best kind of thing to do after having a strange experience.

"Next we can play Mario Kart!"

I dunno, all these shots of them sitting around in bathing suits on bright sunny days just kinda clashes with the mounting dread we're supposed to be feeling. Is that supposed to set the mood? 'Cause it really doesn't – instead it just seems out of place.

The true essence of horror.

Two of them go back in the mine for some unknown reason and play some games with the mine cars – now THAT'S what I call a “mine game.” Good show, movie! Though the fact that he doesn't get brain damage from tipping over after crashing into a wall is a bit unrealistic, and disappointing at that.

Didn't I see this in a Donkey Kong game once?

Then they find a room where their own dead bodies are lying around on slabs. Which, understandably, is a bit of a mindfuck. I mean they didn't remember being DEAD. How could they? They were having such a good time drinking and partying. Nobody would be able to remember a little thing like that. I guess they'll have to really play some pool NOW to get over this!

"This is worse than that time I saw my previous self getting into a battle to the death with my future self! I needed a looooot of Prozac after that, I'll tell you! But this is just too much."

Back at the house, they decide it was Michael's fault somehow, because apparently the psychic girl Rose has mentioned his name a few times, and he's just been acting weird while off his meds. Because, again, that's just how it works. Most serial killers could be cured by having them take meds. But just don't let them get off, 'cause otherwise whoops, they might go on a killing spree! Then it'd really be your bad on that one.

"Oh yeah, we're the best friends ever! We're instantly suspicious of our friend because he didn't take his meds, to the point where we're ready to tie him up and throw him outside into an old mine!"

Well, I guess they also decided it was Michael's fault because they went back into the mine a third time and came across a future version of one of their friends, who told them Michael killed everybody. Gee. Either they never stopped eating mushrooms, or this is a big old time loop. Since there's no reason it would be a time loop as it hasn't been explained, I'm gonna go ahead and assume it's the other thing. I'm sure I won't be wrong at all.

They tie Michael up and lock him in the mine to prevent him from killing people. But then they go back in and Michael has broken out somehow. They chase him around and eventually die off in strange ways. The weirdest has to be this one girl, who just walks right into a room and lets him lock her in there. Did she just have a death wish? I mean it's kinda common sense - don't go into an enclosed space when you're running from a killer.

You totally get an 'F' at Slasher Movie Victim School, lady.

Then things get really weird as this Benedict Cumberbatch-looking guy apparently was the one who jumped in front of the road at the beginning of the movie, causing the truck to go off the road and crash. I'm just so shocked I was wrong about it just being a product of bad mushrooms! Apparently it really is a time loop! What an utter surprise...

All I'm thinking is: why do people in these fucking movies constantly stand out in the middle of the road? I dunno about you, but I've driven all over the place at all times of the day and that has never happened to me. I mean, what? Do you just drive around looking for people in the road, run them over and then reimagine the situation in your head to be like “THEY WERE STANDING RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD WAVING THEIR ARMS!” In what parallel universe do people just jump out in the road at night to wave their arms and distract other drivers? The DMV needs to put out a PSA about this.

And this is my biggest problem with this scene. And with the movie in general! I guess the fact that it doesn't explain why there's a time loop bothers me a little, too, though. Seriously, it just doesn't explain how this time loop exists!

Most of the last 15 minutes is just stuff explaining WHY all the creepy shit from earlier in the movie went on – i.e. Michael wrote the ominous message they found in the mine early in the movie! The Benedict Cumberbatch lookalike wrote the note they found that invited them into the house! Michael ran into his past self and that made him paranoid at the beginning!

Why did all these things happen? Because the movie needed to have them happen to show us the SUPER COOL TIME LOOP, YO. No other reason. There's really just no logic or reason to how the time loop happened or why Michael is crazy, except that he didn't take anti-psychotic meds. Which totally means you meet your past self in the woods and have a super-cool bonfire party:

I really want this loop to keep going and going, until we just have a fucking frat house full of Michaels hangin' out in the woods. That would be kinda funny. But unfortunately that doesn't happen, because the Mine Games are over, and with them, so is fun in general. Alas, poor fun – we knew ye well.

Eh, on second thought, fun will probably survive.

This whole thing was just nonsense. I mean in real life, we would at least be able to see why the time loop happened. Otherwise, it mostly sticks to realism. I mean, it's good movies are trying to address the real problems of mental illness. Never mind the complex nuances of human interaction – if you take anti-psychotic meds, you're probably just a fuckin' serial killer stuck in a time loop. Case closed!

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Piranha 3DD (2012)

It shouldn’t be that hard to make a Piranha movie – put in some stock characters, spice in a bit of bullshit pseudoscience and then put in huge doses of boobs and gore and you have a movie. The bar is low and nobody ever expected anything at all out of this series. So with THAT said…Piranha 3DD is a giant mess that I’m not sure who it was supposed to appeal to.

Director: John Gulager

Starring: Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush

IMDb

Yup, from the super classy title on down, this movie is basically just confused. It’s confused about why it even exists. Frankly, so am I. So let’s play detective and try to get a hold on what the fuck went wrong with this botched attempt at a sequel.

The movie starts off with a news report explaining that the town from the last movie was abandoned because of all the piranha attacks. There doesn’t seem to be any context for showing this news report now or anything, so I guess it was just rerun day at the news station.

Also, what, the ENTIRE FUCKING TOWN was abandoned because some people died in a piranha attack one day? There was no government intervention to try and help out? No scientists sent out to investigate? Nothing?

What's the big deal? It's just a mass murder by way of killer fish. Get over it. Pffffffttttt.

Okay. I totally buy that.

We then get a couple of rednecks playing Open Kill Fodder out on a lake with a dead cow. I’m really just waiting for Jason to show up and kill these guys, but all I get is fart noises and piranha eggs coming out of the cow’s ass.

Worst Hatchet sequel ever!

Our main characters this time are a bunch of people at a theme park. Apparently that guy from Thank You for Smoking who wasn't Aaron Eckhart is now playing some jackass running a water park with an adult section full of nude women swimming around.

Ohh yeah, late night commercials will totally bring in the millions; you're such a fuckin' genius of marketing.

I really don’t get who would ever go to this place – the usual audience for a water park is kids, whose parents would DEFINITELY not take them to some place where there are a bunch of strippers swimming around naked. And the perverts who WOULD usually flock to see strippers WOULDN’T be paying the exorbitant prices for a water park – they’d just be going to a strip club down the street. I mean it’s really not worth the effort.

Also, yes, going down a water slide naked with fireworks in both hands that could easily kill you is an AWESOME way to die horribly and/or live a life of agonizing, crippled and humiliating pain. You truly are the smartest person in the world.

Should I go for a Darwin Awards joke, or is it already implied?

Anyway, enough of that boring stuff – it’s time for OTHER boring stuff, like characters having sex in the water. Apparently this girl named Shelby is a virgin, and has finally decided to give it up to this random guy she just met tonight. They strip and go in the water with her asking him “not to try any funny stuff” – then immediately gets up close to him for a kiss afterwards. Clearly we’re dealing with a real brain trust here. This is further proved when she mistakes a bunch of piranhas nipping at her lower legs for the guy's hard-on against her belly – I know she’s supposed to be a virgin, but unless you just had this magical idea in your head that a guy's dick can disperse into hundreds of tiny, sharp-teethed fish, this is pretty tough to believe.

After they get out of the water, she asks if the guy thinks her friend is prettier than her. The guy says no, he’s never been attracted to girls with big breasts – to which the girl says that’s sweet. I can’t – I just can’t. If I even try to think about this dialogue too much, I'm pretty sure I'll end up turning into an alcoholic in a few paragraphs.

Elsewhere we get more idiots having sex, this time in a van that I guess they forgot to put in “Park” – as it starts rolling down the hill and lands in the lake. Because the one guy had his hand handcuffed to a pole, he can’t get out when piranhas start attacking. The girl says she’s going to go for help. Even though the van is clearly not far from the shore at all and she could easily jump or even walk to safety, she just stands on top of the dumb van and screams for help when clearly nobody is around to help.

Keep shouting, you idiot, I'm sure you'll make it out okay. I mean it's not like you're in a horror mo---oh. Never mind.

I’d like to say nobody hears her because they’re just not around, but I really think the REAL answer is that they all DID hear her and just wanted her to die. I mean, that’s what I would have done.

The next day, main character Maddy is comforting Shelby, who is sad that her best friend, Stand On Top of Van Girl, is missing and probably dead. Shelby then says the girl has stolen 11 of her previous boyfriends – wait a fucking minute; 11 PREVIOUS BOYFRIENDS?! And she was one of your best friends? What, were the rest of your friends serial killers? Child pornographers? How is someone who has stolen 11 of your boyfriends over the years in the running for BEST FRIEND?!?

On second thought, anyone who has 11 boyfriends and still can’t get laid clearly doesn’t deserve sympathy. So I’m good with that. And anyway they DO almost get killed immediately afterward, which is cool:

They fall right into the water where the piranhas are, and somehow don't just die immediately. I guess it's 'cuz they're the MAIN CHARACTERS!

Even despite all of what’s happened already – the piranha attack they saw firsthand and the fact that their friends’ van was found empty in the same lake where piranhas just attacked them – they never alert the authorities and never even really piece together the connection between any of this. You goddamned morons.

But hey, I’ve heard of worse excuses for a Christopher Lloyd cameo:

Flux Capacitor, Marty, yadda yadda yadda.

Gee. Either that’s actually Doc Brown from the future taking the present one’s place, or you just called Christopher Lloyd at the last second and he said ‘fuck it’ and rolled out of bed and came straight to the set. Either way. The scene is pretty much just a bunch of pseudoscience. I mean, THIS is what passes for ‘studying fish’ for him:

Yup, just putting his face up to the glass and imitating piranha teeth snapping. Amazing. The rest of this scene is just filler trying to explain how the fish are going to kill everyone later. I’d go into detail, but really, who cares? Who is this scene supposed to appeal to? Your built-in audience isn’t exactly the type that’s going to really give a crap what you make up to explain your “plot” – they’re pretty much just here for the boobs.

We also get a David Hasselhoff cameo – he’s in this hotel room with a couple women playing some dumb song on his miniature keyboard. I mean really, guys? What, you couldn't throw in a Kurt Russell or Steven Seagal cameo too? Maybe "Who Let the Dogs Out?" to complete the timeless references?

Meanwhile, we get the end of the ‘Shelby is a virgin’ subplot – she’s been feeling sick all day and is afraid she’s going to die, so she begs that idiot to fuck her. Yeah, you could at least GO TO A DOCTOR if you’re afraid you’re going to die, but I guess that would make too much sense, and would deprive us of the absolutely essential scene where a piranha comes out of her vagina and bites the guy’s dick off.

Pfft, not nearly as good as Teeth. Call me again when you have symbolic and metaphoric implications of the feminine coming of age and THEN we'll talk!

Yeah, you just saw that. I’m just amazed it took this movie of all things to show the way piranhas really work. They’re like werewolves! If they attack you, they then proceed to burst out of you like that thing from Alien. That is how werewolves work, though, right? Right?

The only other slightly funny thing that happens is when Marcellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction shows up with no legs – apparently his legs were eaten in the first movie and now he’s chosen this water park opening to try and beat his new fear of water.

That's pride fuckin' with ya. Fuck pride.

He tries to get his sidekick guy, who looks something like a drowned Steve Buscemi, to push him in the water, but keeps changing his mind at the last second. He even says not to listen to him when he protests and just to throw him in anyway. This results in a scene where a lifeguard sees the guy about to push him in and stops them – it’s small change in terms of humor, but eh, you could always do worse I guess – you could always write the crap the rest of this is filled with.

Like this other scene ripping off Nightmare on Elm Street, because yeah, when I watch a Piranha sequel, I really fucking expect to see a parody of Nightmare on Elm Street in it:

We get a couple of scenes of Maddy trying to warn everyone about the piranhas, but her jackass stepfather won’t listen and even has his cop buddy physically pick her up and carry her away to prevent her from telling anyone. It’s pretty much a waste of screen time though, as within the next few minutes after this piranhas are everywhere, and causing a bloodbath if I ever saw one.

Pulling her out of the water to safety would be easy, but I guess that would make this guy a likable character...gee, he'd really be good buddies with Arkin from The Collector, I guess.

If the gore was better, I’d say this was a pretty fun climax – but it’s mediocre, and there are a bunch of flat out what the fuck moments on display. Like, really, do I need to see a 3D close-up shot of this guy’s ass with a piranha attached to it? I mean, that DID have the effect of making me unable to sleep peacefully ever again. If that was your intention, good fuckin' job on that!

I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry for your oncoming flood of night terrors for the rest of eternity after seeing this.

And what’s up with that scene where the stepfather sees a little girl crying over her dead mother and then gives her a bunch of money to try and make up for the dead mother? I mean wow - pretty dark for a horror comedy about fucking piranhas. I mean Jesus.

Then he accidentally runs her over and kills her with his golf cart, turning the whole scene from depressing and unpleasant to absolutely miserable. Thanks a lot for that gem of comedy gold too, movie! Fortunately, the movie then shows us you can get decapitated by a party streamer line if you drive into it. You don't even have to go that fast or anything. Just colliding with a party streamer line will decapitate you. Funny world, huh?

Only in death, however, does this wretched character finally score with the ladies:

I'd say this is incredibly fucking tasteless, but ... no, it's just incredibly fucking tasteless. That's the end of it.

So I guess they kill the piranhas by draining the water from the park and sucking most of them back down the drain. That one fat guy from the instant-mental-scar ass shot from before goes down and blows up the water supply, causing a big torrential downpour upstairs that ends up impaling the cop guy from before with a trident. I dunno, I'm far past the point of caring by now, but what REALLY makes the scene good is the pseudo-epic orchestrations put in as a joke!

Eh, still better than the ending of The Collection. I mean this was supposed to be stupid; when The Collection did it, they were trying to be serious.

Then they get a call from Doc Brown again, telling them the piranhas are evolving and growing legs – well, that’s completely fucking stupid. If you make a sequel of that, I will stick a harpoon in your gut. Some dumb kid goes up to the last piranha flopping around in the shallow water and tries to take a picture of it. His mother warns him against it, but he tells her she’s stupid and piranha can’t move as fast on land – she SHOULD just physically just DRAG him away, but I guess having a kid so stupid was unappealing to her, as she just watches as the piranha devours her child's head:

Hasselhoff ends the movie by calling the kid dumb, which sounds insensitive, but honestly I pretty much agree. I mean, what was that kid’s future, anyway? Certainly nothing good if he’s the type of little moron who approaches the fish that was just murdering everyone to try and take a picture.

I mean, clearly the real injustice here was that the kid shouldn’t have been allowed to have a cell phone at that age! Insert your own social commentary about Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, complete with self-indulgent prattle about how Millennials suck. Now you're ready to write for the Huffington Post.

So that’s your movie! Child death, fish coming out of vaginas and David Hasselhoff. I think that really says it all. What else do you want? A dissertation on the shit-ass godawful dialogue, characters, plot and overall story this movie spewed out as if from a leaky sewer-pipe? Pfft. I think we all know why this movie was really made...

Hmmm...nope, it's still not quite coming to me...

On second thought, I'm stumped.

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