Review: Piranha 3D (2010)

Stars: Ving Rhames, Elisabeth Shue

Budget: $24 million

Directed By: Alexandre Aja

Another remake of the original 1978 version, only this time with quite a few changes to the story. Such as the Piranha's origins and the inclusion of more modern themes, as well as lots and lots of quite explicit nudity.
This one also reintroduces the comedy of the 70's version in a very heavy tongue in cheek way.

Roger Corman had no input in this remake at all. This stars a LOT of familiar faces and people of the time that were associated with schlock horror.
Such as Ving Rhames, Jerry O'connell, Dina Meyer, Christopher LLoyd and many others.
Was funny to see Richard Dreyfus pop up as a parody of his Jaws character too.

Right off the bat i'm not a massive fan of this version mainly for the 3D bit as you know i'm half blind in one eye and 3D/VR stuff don't work for me, but box office wise it did do well and even managed spawn it's own sequel too.

So this time some fisherman, Boyd (Mr Dreyfus) fishing as an earth quake hits and breaks open a previously sealed chamber from a different era. This causes a disturbance in the water and Boyd falls in to be torn apart by the prehistoric piranha.
 Jake Forster is a young man and into admiring all the good looking ladies on the beach this spring break, as a young lad is want to do. He is however a bit down on his luck with the ladies, as proven when he bumps into his ex Kelly Driscoll. Her boyfriend is the typical arsehole you get in films like this, why do girls leave nice guys and get with dicks in movies? (and in real life)
Jake later meets a greasy guy called Derrick (O'Connell) who turns out to be a pornographer, you know one of those guys who makes a video taking advantage of girls showing more than they should on spring break to make some money on producing it. We also meet one of his actresses played by super hot model Kelly Brook.

Later on we join Ving and Shue playing cops Fallon and Julie Forester who are called in by Boyd's wife reporting him missing. When they come across his mutilated corpse they worry and don't know whether to close down the lake, this is made hard by the fact that there's thousands of people currently enjoying spring break there. Unknown to them later more people are attacked by the killer fish.

Jack has to try and persuade his sister and brother (Laura and Zane) not to come to beach so he doesn't get caught showing Derrick some of the 'prime spots' around to film his videos. Zane and Laura get stranded on a little sand dune in the middle of the lake when their boat floats away.
Jake goes to Derrick who has also invited Kelly onto his yacht also, joining them is another one of his actresses too.

Elsewhere Julie has taken a group of experts to check out the lake, they are seismologist divers, Dina Meyer being one of them (Paula). They inspect the new fissure and come to the conclusion that it dates back to prehistoric times which isn't good. Paula and one of the others dive deeper into the fissure where they end up discovering loads of piranha eggs.
The killer fish attack of them as they try to get back to the boat, Julie and the specialist pull Paula's corpse onto the boat and capture a piranha in the process. They take this piranha to Christopher Lloyds retired marine biologist where he explains it's a long thought extinct species that have survived through cannibalism and fast re-population.

With this new, news the police coupled with other survivor go to evacuate the lake, unfortunately they are to late and the killer piranha's have started killing people, they do their best to help. Meanwhile on Derricks boat Jack spots his brother and sister then sends Derrick to go rescue them, he crashes the boat on some rocks doing so.
Unknown to them the lower decks start to flood, the boat starts to sink. Derrick, Crystal and Andrew (Derricks photographer etc) are knocked overboard by the impact too. Andrew manages to survive as Crystal is torn to pieces by the fish, Derrick gets dragged aboard by Danni but he's already been badly eaten (his penis goes floating off) Then he dies.
They think they manage to kill the piranha by blowing up a boat with bait and lots of propane, as usual this isn't the end of the film there's a few more twists and turns first but it close.

Despite all the class A acting from very recognizable actors of the era I am not a fan of this I slightly enjoyed it first time watching (not going to beat around the bush there's a lot of nice sights in this for a younger man than myself). Recently re-watching it though its not aged well and doesn't hold torch to either 1978 or 1995 version. THN awards Piranha 3D with a 2 out of 5 stars but a low watch it if there's really nothing else to watch on 2.