Piranha (2010) review

(9/10)

This contains the 3 B's of a campy horror B-movie: boobs, blood, and beer!

PLOT:It's spring break at Lake Victoria and the party is shaking; apparently, the lake's shaking too, due to the fact that a major quake has opened up an underwater trench that releases thousands of blood-thirsty, prehistoric piranha. Caught in the middle of this is young Jake Forester (Steven McQueen), who insted of watching his little brother and sister like his mom and the county sheriff, Julie (Elizabeth Shue), told him to, decides to get in on the spring break action by being a lake guide for Wild Wild porn director, Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell) and his Wild Wild Girls (Kelly Brook and Riley Steele). The story heats up when Jake's love interest, Kelly (Jessica Szohr), joins the group. You can tell just by the set-up that this is going to be a viscous bloodbath between man and fish. It's a great horror plot executed to the greatest factor of grit and camp.



ACTING:The acting wasn't a marvel, but it was still pretty great for a horror movie. The shiners were Steven McQueen as Jake, Jerry O'Connell as Derrick, Kelly Brook as Danni, Ving Rhames as Deputy Fallen, and Brooklyn Proalx as Laura Forester, with cameos b Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Boyd and Christopher Lloyd as Mr. Goodman. I kind of felt that Elizabeth Shue didn't do anything too much to be considered really special.

SCORE:The score is mainly made up of dramatic horror score and modern rave-party songs, and each does the job of fitting the mood at the right time.

EFFECTS:Being made in 3D (believe me, it was much better in theaters, when it WAS in 3D!), you wouldn't expect the movie's CG effects to be any good, but when it came to our razor-toothed killers, the effects were pretty detailed. The better effects, however, were the natural make-up and prop effects used to show the injuries and corpses the piranha left behind. They were truly grisly and even frightening.



OTHER CONTENT:This movie has everything a good CAMPY horror movie should have: bloody carnage, crude jokes, nude girls, drug abuse, and an unavoidable setup or premise. Aja definitely did a great job of making a fun horror flick. The only problem with this movie is that it's not supposed to be perfect at all, so it doesn't come off as THE BEST horr film ever by far. The only part where it truly felt like a serious horror instead of a campy one is when the piranha hit the beach and the carnage starts ensuing; even then, they make it full of grit.

OVERALL,an awesome horror flick with a great, campy plot, great horror acting, fitting score and soundtrack, detailed CG effects and grisly make-up effects, and everything this movie needs to be the ultimate campy horror, but it wasn't made to be perfect obviously, for it shows.