Piranha 3D (2010) - Aja's gory sexploitation remake is a hoot

♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Sexploitation Movie of the Year

 

The enticing poster for Alexandre Aja's Piranha 3D

 

Piranha 3D is a very loose remake of Joe Dante's Piranha (1978). Mutated piranha fish attack a lake that's popular among youths on spring break.

 

Director Alexandre Aja (Mirrors (2008)) has created a retelling of the hokey Dante-shenanigans and given it a new, virile injection of bare skin, promiscuity and blood. And color-graded the whole affair very heavily, which gives the genre-conscious killer fish film a bizarre but consistent look.

It is an important part of the film's success that it has attracted such great stars as Ving Rhames (Caged Animal (2010)), Elisabeth Shue (Back to the Future Part II (1989)), Christopher Lloyd (Snowmen (2010)) and Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws (1975)). Piranha 3D has lots of fun over-the-top gags, as one could hope for, but most of the CGI-scenes look crappy and just very weird, which, however, was also the case with the practical effects in the fish attack scenes of the original film. It doesn't rob the film of its fun.

Piranha 3D is written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg (Sorority Row (2009), both).

 

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Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 24 mil. $

Box office: 83.1 mil. $

= Box office success

[Piranha 3D was released August 20 and runs 88 minutes. Dreyfuss only agreed to star in the film after he was given a higher salary, which he donated away to charity. Chuck Russell was scheduled to direct, before Aja finally landed the job. Filming took place in May - July 2009 in Lake Havasu, Arizona. It was delayed so the water would get hotter, and shooting with 3D equipment was abandoned due to practical issues. The film was instead converted to 3D in post. It opened #6 to a 10.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it grossed 25 mil. $ (30.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 9.4 mil. $ (11.3 %) and the UK with 6.9 mil. $ (8.3 %). Piranha 3D is certified fresh at 73 % with a 6.2 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Piranha 3D?