I suppose if I were a genre buff, I might have liked PIRANHA better. As it is, I started out liking it OK, then over the course of the movie found myself liking it less and less, then actively disliking it more and more. By the end, I was really sorry I had shelled out ten bucks for the DVD. At this point, I don't even know if I'll bother to go back and check out the commentary track.
Joe Dante is a reasonably talented director, John Sayles's screenplay mostly (*mostly*) avoids the aggressive stupidity of the average genre B-film, and most of the male actors are old pros (Paul Bartel is terrible; to be fair, I think that for some reason I don't understand, he's actually trying to be terrible). The women, of course, were hired for their looks, and they do fine on that basis.
Still, it doesn't work, for several reasons:
It doesn't come close to transcending the genre clichés. Gee, evil military men, shortsighted gummint scientists, stupid cops, greedy businessmen, and a pompous and annoying authority figure. Ho-hum. Look: if you do exactly what other movies do, in exactly the way they do it, your movie isn't transcending the clichés. It's clichéd.
One exception to the above is that Bartel's annoying authority figure is not, as genre convention would dictate, a self-serving coward. Indeed, in one scene he is actually permitted to display considerable physical courage in saving other people's lives. So never let it be said I'm unwilling to give credit where credit is due.
Worse, the piranhas kill in patently impossible ways. One character bleeds to death after the piranhas eat the foot which he dangles in the water. The next victim dies when the piranhas pull him out of a boat by his hand. The problem with all this is that when the victim felt the first nip, he would yank his hand or foot out of the water, and piranhas (even evil mutant warmongering gummint piranhas) are just not big enough to stop it. This isn't a matter of choice. If you've ever accidentally touched a hot stovetop burner, you'll know what I mean. Your hand jumps away from the burner by itself; no act of will is involved. It's pure reflex. It might be possible to *intentionally* place your hand on a burner and leave it there while it sears your flesh off your bones, but if you're not expecting the pain, you'll pull away.
So we are forced to watch characters make *literally* superhuman efforts to let the piranhas eat them. It just looks stupid, no matter what the intentions of the filmmakers were. After this, it becomes impossible to take the film seriously on any level. If they wanted to do this kind of thing, they should have played it for laughs--on the other hand, given the level of the "comic relief" in this film (hey, Cletus, those pants hit that cop in the face, hyuk, hyuk), maybe that wouldn't have been such a good idea.
[POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT]
Then, the film's first big setpiece mass attack includes (toward the beginning) a piece of business so stupid that one laughs--derisively--just at the wrong moment. And it ends--in spite of the presence of at least a dozen people in the water--with only one fatality (because the rest of the potential piranha snacks were children, and the filmmakers didn't have the guts to waste a kid). In other words, these superfish can pull a grown man off a boat, but they can't manage to chomp a few small children who are already immersed in the water. What a world, what a world.
Of course, in the climactic attack, the piranhas are able with very little trouble to pull full-grown adults off of air mattresses and innertubes, which makes their failure in the preceding attack look just a little bit silly.
And of course there's the basic problem with 99% of horror flicks: horror isn't terror. I fail to understand how anyone can claim to be frightened by gouts of red liquid which they know isn't blood (you'd think this would be a source of embarrassment, rather than pride). In order to be truly frightening, a movie must present realistic and believable characters who we actually care about, and place them in danger. The body count isn't the point. JAWS is a perfect example of what I mean. Even the few minor victims (Chrissie Watkins, Alex Kintner, Ben Gardner and the unnamed guy in the rowboat [not to mention Pippet the dog]) are perfectly delineated in their brief appearances; they seem like real people. Their deaths serve to establish the shark's menace, so that when our three main characters (whom we have come to like and respect) go out on the *Orca*, we genuinely fear for their safety.
Here, we have obviously fake people getting bitten by obviously fake piranhas and squirting out obviously fake blood. Ooh, how scary. Even if you're willing to suspend your disbelief enough to find it creepy and horrifying (I wasn't), it just isn't frightening.
PIRANHA gets far more respect than it deserves.
4/10.
Joe Dante is a reasonably talented director, John Sayles's screenplay mostly (*mostly*) avoids the aggressive stupidity of the average genre B-film, and most of the male actors are old pros (Paul Bartel is terrible; to be fair, I think that for some reason I don't understand, he's actually trying to be terrible). The women, of course, were hired for their looks, and they do fine on that basis.
Still, it doesn't work, for several reasons:
It doesn't come close to transcending the genre clichés. Gee, evil military men, shortsighted gummint scientists, stupid cops, greedy businessmen, and a pompous and annoying authority figure. Ho-hum. Look: if you do exactly what other movies do, in exactly the way they do it, your movie isn't transcending the clichés. It's clichéd.
One exception to the above is that Bartel's annoying authority figure is not, as genre convention would dictate, a self-serving coward. Indeed, in one scene he is actually permitted to display considerable physical courage in saving other people's lives. So never let it be said I'm unwilling to give credit where credit is due.
Worse, the piranhas kill in patently impossible ways. One character bleeds to death after the piranhas eat the foot which he dangles in the water. The next victim dies when the piranhas pull him out of a boat by his hand. The problem with all this is that when the victim felt the first nip, he would yank his hand or foot out of the water, and piranhas (even evil mutant warmongering gummint piranhas) are just not big enough to stop it. This isn't a matter of choice. If you've ever accidentally touched a hot stovetop burner, you'll know what I mean. Your hand jumps away from the burner by itself; no act of will is involved. It's pure reflex. It might be possible to *intentionally* place your hand on a burner and leave it there while it sears your flesh off your bones, but if you're not expecting the pain, you'll pull away.
So we are forced to watch characters make *literally* superhuman efforts to let the piranhas eat them. It just looks stupid, no matter what the intentions of the filmmakers were. After this, it becomes impossible to take the film seriously on any level. If they wanted to do this kind of thing, they should have played it for laughs--on the other hand, given the level of the "comic relief" in this film (hey, Cletus, those pants hit that cop in the face, hyuk, hyuk), maybe that wouldn't have been such a good idea.
[POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT]
Then, the film's first big setpiece mass attack includes (toward the beginning) a piece of business so stupid that one laughs--derisively--just at the wrong moment. And it ends--in spite of the presence of at least a dozen people in the water--with only one fatality (because the rest of the potential piranha snacks were children, and the filmmakers didn't have the guts to waste a kid). In other words, these superfish can pull a grown man off a boat, but they can't manage to chomp a few small children who are already immersed in the water. What a world, what a world.
Of course, in the climactic attack, the piranhas are able with very little trouble to pull full-grown adults off of air mattresses and innertubes, which makes their failure in the preceding attack look just a little bit silly.
And of course there's the basic problem with 99% of horror flicks: horror isn't terror. I fail to understand how anyone can claim to be frightened by gouts of red liquid which they know isn't blood (you'd think this would be a source of embarrassment, rather than pride). In order to be truly frightening, a movie must present realistic and believable characters who we actually care about, and place them in danger. The body count isn't the point. JAWS is a perfect example of what I mean. Even the few minor victims (Chrissie Watkins, Alex Kintner, Ben Gardner and the unnamed guy in the rowboat [not to mention Pippet the dog]) are perfectly delineated in their brief appearances; they seem like real people. Their deaths serve to establish the shark's menace, so that when our three main characters (whom we have come to like and respect) go out on the *Orca*, we genuinely fear for their safety.
Here, we have obviously fake people getting bitten by obviously fake piranhas and squirting out obviously fake blood. Ooh, how scary. Even if you're willing to suspend your disbelief enough to find it creepy and horrifying (I wasn't), it just isn't frightening.
PIRANHA gets far more respect than it deserves.
4/10.