My review of Piranha 3D

Meh. You know, as I am an 18 year old college student, movies like this teach me many things. I have survived the serial killer stuff of high school, and now I have to survive a few more serial killers and 4 spring break vacations to beach locations and I can finally go on to become a security guard for an evil corporation. I am in the prime of my life for an unfortunate occurrence that ends my life in a violent way. High schoolers get killed by serial killers, college students get killed on Spring Break and if you survive that sweet. Dr. No is hiring. Ya just gotta make it to 30 and your rate of dying by some unseen violent occurrence drops drastically. I'm rambling here and probably not making much sense so yeah, Piranha 3D.

Acting/Characters: You know, Jerry O'Connell should stop doing horror films playing a character named Derrek. It just doesn't end well. That aside, there didn't really need to be acting in this film. All anyone really had to do was panic and die. My favorite characters by far were Christopher Lloyd and Richard Dreyfuss. I particularly liked all of the Jaws references with Dreyfuss. No characters flat out annoyed me which is always nice. Overall, it could have been worse. However, they put kids in the movie! Kids have no point. You know they're not gonna die so why put them in there. every character in the film should be fair game for a brutal and bloody death. Kids can't die in horror. What's the point? 6/10

Plot: You can pretty much tell the plot from looking at the poster. All it is is blood,, blood, and more blood. This is one of the goriest films I have ever seen. This is a total "shut down and enjoy the carnage" movie. So yeah, other than piranhas eating people, there isn't too much in the way of plot. Not that there needs to be. 6/10

Screenplay: Packed full of Jaws references especially in the very beginning. I liked that. I like it when movies reference other movies. Other than that the screenplay was a bit weak. Like most of the movie, it could have been a lot worse. 5/10

Likableness: Maybe it's just because I was tired that day or that I might not have been in the mood for that level of gore, I just wasn't feeling it. But I still recognized its good points. And its bad points. I doubt that the sequel will succeed. It might though. If it doesn't take itself seriously like this one, it could work. But yeah. it was a halfway decent film 5/10

Final Score: 22/40 55% (M)


TRIVIA TIME: 1. Alexandre Aja planned to have Joe Dante (director of the original Piranha (1978)) and James Cameron (director of Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981)) play boat captains who give safety lessons to the teens. Dante wanted to do it but Cameron was too busy.

2. The movie has a movie poster with the same style as Jaws and its sequels i.e. the monster at the bottom of the sea concept

3. Richard Dreyfuss' character has the same first name (Matt) as his character in Jaws. Dreyfuss' character is called Matt Boyd in this movie whereas in the earlier film his character was called Matt Hooper.

4. The director filmed scenes specifically for the trailers and TV spots.