Film Friday: Piranha 3D (2010)

I don’t often call for the brutal murder of an entire film crew, but in the case of Piranha, I think it’s necessary. Do not see this film. Seriously. Don’t. Normally, I’m a sucker for these kinds of films, but this is an atrocity.

** spoilers. . . yeah, whatever **

"Plot"

Piranha or Piranha 3D or Piranha 3Ds and an F or whatever it’s called is the story of what happens when an earthquake opens a passage from an underground lake containing super-aggressive, two million year old piranhas to a lake used by hundreds of drunken college kids for spring break. Meanwhile, there’s a subplot involving the sheriff (Elisabeth Shue) who must save her kids, who have gone out on the water on a boat with Jerry O’Connell (Sliders), a porno director, and two porn stars. There’s also a scene with Richard Dreyfus which is supposed to be an homage to Jaws, but isn’t. Jim from Taxi (Christopher Lloyd) has a scene as a scientist. Ving Rhames has a speaking part as a deputy. The rest is sex or carnage.

No. . . Just No.

When I first heard about Piranha, I was actually a little excited. I’m a sucker for films like this because they’re pure escapism. Indeed, when it comes to mindless fun, there’s nothing better than watching some washed up star or never-has-been chasing a giant Dinocroc or Sharktopus or the Abominable Panda. Horrid acting, bad dialog, lousy effects, plots that make no sense and moral dilemmas written by ten year olds. . . it’s all fun. And when these films somehow get a budget and some real actors, the fun goes up a notch!

But Piranha was not fun, it was revolting.

Piranha combines the most violent gross-out moments of Saw or similar torture porn with the over-the-top sleaze of Girls Gone Wild. You will be treated to several minutes of lesbian sex, followed by more naked girls, followed by about 20 minutes of the most disgusting dissections of humans ever. If you can think of something disgusting to do to a human body, they do it in this film. And like all filmmakers with nothing to offer except shock, they carry this on way too long. I’m not kidding when I say the massacre lasts about 20 minutes, with each moment trying to get more disgusting than the prior moment. And this is on top of the gruesome killings that dot the rest of the film.

Cult Classic? Hardly.

Piranha wanted to become a “cult film.” Cult films somehow develop a fanbase despite being truly awful. And those fans will spend money on these films for decades. But like Snakes on a Plane and other manufactured wannabe cult films, Piranha failed. There are two reasons for this.

First, these manufactured films fail because they are marketed wrong. People who enjoy cult films do so because they feel they’ve stumbled upon something the rest of the world missed. A movie like Piranha, by comparison, is sold as a “cool” movie. It’s the difference between finding a cool bar in the bad part of town and having a commercial bar made up to look like a dive. The cult film crowd knows the difference. And if you’re trying to reach the cool kids with your advertising, don’t expect these people to fall for your pitch.

But even more importantly, the whole concept of how they try to manufacture films like Piranha is wrong. Most cult films are truly earnest. The creator had a vision which they loved and they set out to see their vision made into a film. Evil Dead was shot over a period of a year and a half, on a shoestring budget, despite numerous hurdles. Sam Raimi didn’t set out to make a bad movie, he set out to put his vision on film the best he could. Rocky Horror Picture Show, perhaps the greatest cult classic, started out as a play written by a man trying to sort out his gender issues. Neither filmmaker expected commercial success, far from it, but they genuinely believed in what they were making and they weren’t trying to make something that would be mocked.

Piranha on the other hand, like Snakes on a Plane and other attempts at creating a cult classic, was made to be mocked. Studios think the common thread in cult classics is that they are bad films. Indeed, they are so bad and so campy that they seem to a professional as if they were meant to be bad. Hence, studios cynically set out to make bad, campy films when they try to create cult films.

But this completely misses what fans see in cult films. Cult fans aren’t looking for bad movies, they are looking for earnest movies that turned out all wrong. They are looking for films made with a lot of love, but little talent. They see the diamond in the rough, even if no one else does. What Piranha offers is a diamond that’s been scratched up to look rough. Indeed, whereas Evil Dead or Rocky Horror strove to reach their full potential, it’s obvious to anyone watching that Piranha never even tried. Think of it this way, we love the minor league player who gets his shot but just can’t pull it off. . . yet we despise the pro who only gives it half his best effort.

What’s more, the studio is so afraid of being tagged with having made a bad film that they fill these fake cult films with signals to tell you they intended the film to stink. This is downright insulting. It’s like an author taking a chance on some unusual style for their book but then constantly inserting editor's notes to tell you what they did is intentional. Have faith in your work or don’t bother.

Finally, let’s cut to the truth about Piranha. Piranha stinks not because the studio tried to make a bad film, but because it is a bad film. If the studio had any idea how to make this a good film, it would have done so. When it realized it didn't know how to make this film work, it came up with this bullship idea of intentionally making a bad film. In other words, this was the best the studio could do, and all the rest is a cover up. . . it's sour grapes ("I could have done better, but I didn't try."). What’s more, like the studios do with other failures, it tried to hide its failure with over-the-top sex and gore, which it then pretended is all part of the gag. Tell me you can't hear the executives laughing at the "idiots who will buy anything."

So it is without heavy heart that I am calling for the brutal murder of the entire cast and crew of this film. . . except Ving Rhames, I like him.

What are your favorite cult classic? Or giant monster film?