HUNGRY prehistoric fish are the subject of this week’s B-movie revival with the remake of Roger Corman's schlock horror Piranha.
As thousands of party-seeking, alcohol drinking, flesh-flaunting students descend on a sleepy American town's lake for Spring Break, an ill-timed earthquake breaks open a channel to an undiscovered water chamber deep inside the earth.
When scientists dive into the dark depths to take a closer look, they soon discover something they didn’t expect: a massive shoal of blood thirsty prehistoric piranha.
With a hunger for human flesh and an all-consuming appetite, can Sheriff Forester (Elisabeth Shue) stop the flaying-fish from feasting while keeping her children safe?
B-Movie fun
Like Snakes On A Plane before it, few contemporary mainstream horrors revel in their own absurdity as much as director Alexandre Aja's latest film.
Piranha proudly wades into B-movie waters fully prepared to embrace a thorough gnawing from critics regarding the paper thin plot and gratuitous violence and nudity.
And by keeping its tongue firmly in its cheek from the outset, this 88 minute fright-fest is hard to dislike.
Brit model-cum-actress Kelly Brook puts in a strong turn as a ‘Wild Girl’ filming her latest feature, as do the handful of adult movie stars lending their unabashed talents to the film.
But the real stand-out performances come from the special effects team.
Gore
Uniting subtle CG with good old fashioned prosthetic gore, Aja brings a disturbingly visceral quality to the inevitable - and large-scale - carnage.
From fish attacks to being squashed by speeding boats; every opportunity to make the audience wince and squirm is taken advantage of.
Aja reels the audience in with predictable jumps and hammy cliched characters (including a brilliantly over-acting Christopher Lloyd as an inexplicably knowledgable fish expert), while keeping the pace swimming along with over-worked 'edge of your seat' tension and buckets of blood.
Piranha is a horror which revels so gloriously in it’s cult status heritage and low-expectations it undeniably falls into comedy territory - albeit pitch black comedy at that.
Those easily offended by topless tanned twenty-somethings or bone-nibbling brutality - in full and glorious 3D - best give Piranha a very wide berth.
But with an ending just begging for another dose of fishy-fun, you won’t be going in the water anytime soon.
5/10 - Tasty twaddle.