Piranha 3D was un-fucking-believable and one of my favourite films of 2010. It was one of the most consistently fun and enjoyable films I've seen in ages and I had high hopes for Piranha 3DD. I honestly never thought I would see it at the cinema. After having its 2011 release pushed back indefinitely, I assumed I would have to watch it at home. When it got a cinema release, I was delighted. By promising to double everything from the first film, how could they possibly go wrong? How many times have I said that? I will learn my lesson eventually.
First things first, it's not terrible, it's just terribly disappointing. The story's pretty simple: marine biologist Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returns from university to the water-park that she and her step-father, Chet (David Koechner) co-own. He has built a new "adults only" section and replaced all the lifeguards with strippers in the hopes of boosting business. Maddy meets her ex-boyfriend Kyle (Chris Zylka) and her friends Shelby (Katrina Bowden), Barry (Matt Bush) and Ashley (Meagan Tandy). That evening at the lake, piranhas kill Ashley and her boyfriend and attack Shelby and her boyfriend, with one of them swimming inside Shelby's vagina (can you guess what's going to happen with that one?). The next day, Maddy and Shelby are attacked by piranhas as they sit on the pier at the lake. Maddy kills one of them and she, Kyle and Barry take it to Carl Goodman (Christopher Lloyd), who tells them that the piranha from Lake Victoria have travelled through underground rivers and lakes and man-made pipes and sewage systems. Attracted by the chemicals in the water, the piranha are moving closer to the water park. On the day of the park's grand re-opening, David Hasselhoff appears as a celebrity lifeguard and the piranha close in...
The ingredients are all there: returning characters Carl Goodman, Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) and Drew Cunningham (Paul Scheer); hot young actresses; ridiculous bad guys; brilliant cameos and over-the-top gore and nudity. But, where Alexandre Aja expertly blended all the ingredients in the first film, director John Gulager of the Feast films can't get it quite right. The film takes too long setting things up and there are four separate instances of a pair of people being attacked by the piranhas as they venture into the lake. When things finally kick off and the piranha attack the water park, the carnage simply isn't there. People get out of the water too quickly and what could have been an orgy of violence turns out to be more like a dry-humping of violence. I mean, they even manage to mess up a penis-biting scene! The ending is incredibly sudden and the whole thing lasts barely seventy-five minutes - an extended credits sequence with outtakes from the film lasts about ten minutes.
The best thing about the film is easily David Hasselhoff. He's fantastic, really funny and pokes fun at himself and his role in Baywatch. Danielle Panabaker and Katrina Bowden are fine (although if you're wondering whether Panabaker finally survives a horror film, you'll have to watch and find out) but the other characters just fall flat. David Koechner's villain just isn't sleazy enough and neither Chris Zylka not Matt Bush have enough personality. They should have given Deputy Fallon more screen time too. The ending sets us up for Piranha 3DDD but whether it will actually get made remains to be seen.
All in all, a really disappointing follow-up. When David Hasselhoff is the best thing about your film, you know you've gone wrong somewhere.
4 out of 10.
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