Piranha 3D (2010)
Directed by Alexandre Aja
Each year the population of sleepy Lake Victoria, Arizona explodes from 5,000 to 50,000 residents for the annual Spring Break celebration. But then, an earthquake opens an underwater chasm, releasing an enormous swarm of ancient Piranha that have been dormant for thousands of years, now with a taste for human flesh. This year, there's something more to worry about than the usual hangovers and complaints from locals, a new type of terror is about to be cut loose on Lake Victoria.
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What critics compared Piranha 3D to
Alexandre Aja’s brilliant B-movie excursion “Piranha 3D” transformed the horror movie premise of the original into a live action comic book that flaunted outrageous genre tropes like a firecracker; Turteltaub never gains such confidence in the material to let it go all-out bonkers.
Essentially a PG-13 version of Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D with fewer jokes and even less of a point, The Meg is a faceless, lifeless, workmanlike, unimaginative, lowest common denominator-courting, movie-like substance.
Imagine a trashy empty-calories combo of Sharknado and the gore-and-nudity-heavy Piranha 3D—two horror movies loaded with lovable dumbness.
There are plenty of big set pieces, which either rip off or pay homage to everything from Jaws to Piranha 3D to Deep Blue Sea , depending on your view.
I don’t need Piranha 3D -type levels of brutality (though, let’s be honest, that would’ve been welcome) but when you come to see a giant shark make lunch out of a slew of cardboard cut-out characters, I don’t want to have their supposed personalities “explored” instead.
The answer arrived in the film’s final act, a portion of which is set on a crowded beach in China’s Sanya Bay that instantly nods to both the fictional Jaws town of Amity, MA and Lake Victoria, home of Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D.
An octopus drummer bangs rhythms of competition, capes and costumes distinctly define their wearers, dinosaurs exist, trench monsters evoke Wan’s horror sensibilities (fabulous Piranha 3D meets 47 Meters Down shot selection) – the surprises never cease.
As a Piranha 3D-style splatterfest, The Monkey serves up plenty of morbid laughs and sleazy, cheap CGI gore.
And finally, inject a tiny dash of sass and bikini-filled montages, with a spring break slasher setting, courtesy of Cabin Fever or Piranha 3D.