‘Piranha 3-D’ Back For a Second Bite Already?
by Ben Bussey
Okay, try to contain yourselves now… it’s been announced by Entertainment Weekly that Dimension Films is starting development on a sequel to Piranha 3-D. And… yeah, funnily enough, that’s pretty much all we know at this point.
Now this is some fascinating news in many respects. Piranha’s opening weekend only earned them $10 million/6th place at the US box office; this off the back of a $25 million budget. That’s hardly instant blockbuster status. And yet (my own review notwithstanding) the word-of-mouth has been so overwhelmingly positive, with everyone from the mainstream critics to the underground bloggers declaring the movie to be a masterpiece of summer splatter. If on the strength of a positive audience reaction alone, a studio are willing to greenlight a sequel to a movie that hasn’t even made its production costs back yet… I must say, that’s quite an encouraging move. Even so – perhaps we ought to hold our horses a little here. And I’m saying that not so much to the Dimension money men as I am to the fans.
Now, I’m well aware that I’m in the minority in that I didn’t go apeshit for Piranha 3-D. Sure, I enjoyed it. I’ve no doubt I’ll wind up owning it on DVD, and it will come off the shelf on many a beer-and-curry-fueled Friday night. I just don’t think it’s anywhere near as great as it’s being made out to be by so many people, a large percentage of whom are writers I greatly respect and trust. And while I’m not about to declare “I’m right, you’re wrong,” I’ve just got a couple of things I’d like to add on the subject of Piranha 3-D.
I’m sure we all remember that little thing that happened a few years back called Snakes On A Plane? We all remember the ridiculous fan fervor that whipped up around that movie, the hopes that it would be the B-movie to end all B-movies. And we remember the dull thud as we all fell back down to earth on seeing the movie itself, realising it was nothing more than a by-the-numbers studio thriller with a somewhat meager side order of the absurd.
And going back a little further – do we remember Freddy Vs Jason? I’ll speak entirely for myself here. I absolutely adored that movie on first viewing. I was there opening weekend, evening show, packed house, dragging along my reluctant other half, and I slurped Pepsi, gobbled popcorn, and laughed my arse off for an hour and a half, along with a couple of hundred other laughing, slurping, popcorn guzzlers. It had way more blood than most Hollywood movies, and a couple of tasty bits of nudity (yes, don’t say it, I know that wasn’t really Katharine Isabelle), and such a wild and trashy feel that I couldn’t help but be swept up… so much so, that on first viewing, I didn’t take too much notice of the fact that the teen characters were all so utterly detestable, or that their tedious subplots took up way too much of the running time, or that there was a distinct overuse of really weak and unnecessary CGI.
Does this sound at all familiar to anyone who saw Piranha this weekend?
Not long before my review came online, I half-joked on Twitter that it should perhaps carry a disclaimer: that I saw the film on my own, in the daytime, in a largely empty auditorium, sober. From the multitude of reviews I’ve seen that do not acknowledge the film’s abundant flaws (I’m astonished so few have commented on the pacing problems, or how unendearing Steven R. McQueen is), I can’t help but wonder if most of these other reviewers saw the movie under somewhat different circumstances. After all, although we don’t always acknowledge it, the circumstances under which we see a movie have a tremendous influence on how we interpret a film. This is something which, both as critics and as fans, we need to take into account. I’m well aware that I did not see Piranha 3-D under the most desirable circumstances, and have no doubt that it plays far better with a crowd. Does this make my interpretation of the film less valid? I don’t think so. Might being part of an enthusiastic crowd have coloured the perceptions of other reviewers? At the risk of coming off a bit conceited, I can’t help but wonder if that might be the case…
Before I get labeled party pooper of the year, let me reiterate – I did like Piranha 3-D. I am absolutely susceptible to the charms of a movie that contains such vast quantities of flesh-ripping violence and female nudity. I have no doubt that the two key scenes that everyone keeps talking about – the Spring Break massacre, and the “underwater ballet” – will go down in the annals of horror history, amongst those (in the parlance of our times) “OMG” moments everyone remembers like American Werewolf’s transformation, Re-Animator’s head scene, Evil Dead’s tree rape, and so on. But I can’t believe I’m the only one who was checking their watch in between those two pivotal set-pieces; or that I’m the only one wondering why so much screen time was wasted on the little brother and sister; or that I’m the only one who found the ending more than a little bit feeble.
Also, I really struggle to believe I was the only one wishing for more likable central protagonists. Another common misconception about B-movie horror is that we don’t need to like the young leads. That simply isn’t true. If we can’t connect to them, how are we supposed to give a damn what happens to them? While I dug most of the supporting players, the real lead of this movie was Steven R. McQueen as Jake; and I don’t want to seem like I’m obsessing over this, but I just can’t get over how miscast he was. The role clearly called for more of a nerdy misfit type: someone akin to Elijah Wood in The Faculty, Jason Lively in Night of the Creeps, or even – dare I say it – Shia LaBeouf in Transformers. McQueen just didn’t have that at all; he’s way too pretty, buff and bronzed. As much as he may have been aiming to convey emo insecurity, he exudes sporty confidence. You can’t just put a 90210 type in a Pixies T-shirt and expect us to buy it.
Even so, none of this is not to say I wouldn’t welcome a second Piranha 3-D. I rather suspect we should take all sequel talk with a hefty pinch of salt right now; time was, sequels to Freddy Vs Jason and Snakes On A Plane also looked like a sure thing. But I certainly think the potential is there to do the same thing again, just that bit bigger and better. Given that the first film has been so celebrated on the basis of its excess, hopefully whoever winds up doing the sequel (it seems too early to say whether it’ll be Aja or not) will realise that the only way to go is to up the ante even further. Perhaps that means even more gore and nudity; but even more so that means more energy, more absurdity, a more unrepentantly cartoonish tone. Despite all talk to the contrary, I maintain that Piranha felt too much like it was aiming for serious horror at times, which just didn’t feel appropriate to me. If Piranha 3-D 2 can do something akin to what Evil Dead 2 did with its source material, we might get somewhere; and if they go with this something along the lines of the sequel idea that Aja suggested – “a huge event with like 200,000 young people from all around the world taking mushrooms and partying on the beach” – consider me there.
In the meantime – if you haven’t seen Piranha 3-D yet, do so. I fully intend checking it out once more whilst it’s still on the big screen. Laugh, wince, enjoy it the way you’re supposed to enjoy a trashy horror movie; just don’t kid yourself that it’s flawless.
