Piranha 3D amps up the concept of “killer fish during spring break”, adding gallons of gore, plentiful nudity, and some of the dumbest humor 2010 had to offer. (Mostly) not a compliment.
Welcome to Reb00t! A series (with no set schedule!) where I dig deep through the 2000’s to find all the horror remakes that we were inundated with over that weirdly bleak decade. Sometimes they’ll be good, sometimes they’ll be terrible, sometimes they’ll be great. In a few, rare times, they’ll be better than the original! These are all my personal views, obviously, so feel free to tell me I’m insane in the comments.
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This week, we dive into 2010’s Piranha 3D!
Listen, guys; it’s not going to be “diamonds in the rough” every week. While this one is divisive, to say the least, I can’t help but have a bit of a soft spot for it.
Piranha is arguably one of the better films of the mid-era Corman productions. Coming from one of his shining stars, Joe Dante, 1978’s Piranha is just the right level of goofy and violent that Dante became known for in his career. Sure, it’s a bit hokey, and time has done it no favors (except the claymation walking piranha; that thing is still rad as hell), but it’s still a lot of fun nearly 50 years later.
Now, in 2010, a new question popped into producers’ heads; what if we do Piranha again, but this time with a lot more nudity, insane levels of violence, and just some of the dumbest dick jokes you’ve ever seen? And with that, Piranha 3D was born!
Relocating to a desert oasis known for its Spring Break festivities, we follow the local sheriff (Elisabeth Shue; Adventures In Babysitting, Leaving Las Vegas) as she tries to get to the bottom of the bodies showing up on her lake. Surprise; it’s piranhas! Now, she needs to find a way to close the lake right at the peak of the spring break revelry, while also saving her kids from a watery death. Can she save everyone? Nope!
Piranha 3D has a surprisingly stacked cast, for a cheapie remake. Showing up on the roster is Ving Rhames, Jerry O’Connell, Christopher Lloyd, Paul Sheer, a baby-faced Adam Scott, and Richard Dreyfuss in one of the ultimate “why did you agree to this?” cameos I’ve ever seen. It adds a level of clout that a lot of the ‘00 remakes didn’t really have, most of them collecting their casts from the CW. I can’t say it made it better than other remakes, but it definitely made for a bunch of “huh, he’s in this?” moments.
Now, Piranha 3D is very much a product of its time. It squarely lives in the “beer commercial” era of female representation, with most of the onscreen ladies either undressing or already naked. It’s honestly kind of a culture shock, watching this again in 2025. It doesn’t help that the humor here is just real fucking dumb. Mostly made up of dick and sex jokes, this thing is surprisingly sophomoric across the board. Not really surprising, coming from Alexandre Aja, who, while arguably making some pretty fantastic mean-spirited violence in his career, has a very, uh, “French” way about him when it comes to comedy and sex.
But, let’s be honest; if you’re watching this, you’re probably here for the still insane lake massacre scene. Probably the reason Aja was hired, the lake massacre is still kinda jaw dropping in its Grand Guignol levels of gore and splatter. Mixing practical and digital (but mostly practical!), the complete and utter carnage the piranhas cause is legendary; full skeletonizations, scalpings, disembowelment, people getting cut in half with wires, eaten alive through the anus! There is just insane levels of gnarly violence, leaving the lake looking more like Normandy Beach. It is truly a spectacle of on-screen brutality, and one of the best sequences of Aja’s career.
Listen; this isn’t great. It is just barely hovering above good. There are a fair amount of you who would find this tacky, and a good amount of you who’d’ find this out and out offensive. But, if you want to take a dive into this goopy, goofy aquatic killer remake, do it how I did back when I saw this the summer before my freshman year of college; on a buddies couch, stoned out of your gourd, giggling at the stupidity of it all, and wondering what you want to snack on.
Side Note: The original idea was to do a double feature article with Piranha 3DD. But, guys; don’t watch 3DD. Learn from me. There are American Pie VOD sequels that are less sophomoric than 3DD.
