Piranha 3DD

Picking up shortly after the events of its 2010 predecessor, Piranha, Piranha 3DD details the chaos that ensues at a water park after the titular creatures find their way into the plumbing. It’s a purposefully tongue-in-cheek setup that’s generally employed to underwhelming effect by filmmaker John Gulager, as the movie, which has clearly been shot on a shoestring, boasts a roster of hopelessly forgettable central characters and, for the most part, lurches from one poorly-conceived set-piece to the next. The film consequently suffers from an absence of momentum that proves rather disastrous, though there’s little doubt that the sporadic inclusion of appreciatively gory interludes prevents Piranha 3DD‘s transformation into an irredeemable waste of time. (It’s clear, too, that the movie benefits from the return of Ving Rhames’ Deputy Fallon and Paul Scheer’s Andrew, with the hilarious banter between their respective characters – eg “Don’t listen to my pussy-ass mouth!” – standing as an obvious highlight within the proceedings.) The film’s most disappointing stretch, however, is undoubtedly the climactic massacre at the aforementioned water park, as the sequence, which ultimately stands in sharp contrast to the gleefully over-the-top bloodbath within Alexandre Aja’s superior first movie, has been infused with a palpably low-rent feel that’s compounded by Gulager’s oddly incoherent directorial choices. It is, as a result, impossible to label Piranha 3DD as anything more than a fairly blatant cash-grab, which is a shame, certainly, given the potential offered by both the premise and the original film.

** out of ****