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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