A Week of "P" Movies: Piranha 2

So, instead of reviewing Piranha 3D like everyone else out there, I'm reviewing the sequel to the original Piranha. Nobody wanted to go see Piranha 3D with me this past weekend. Boo. I guess I'm going to another matinee by myself :(.

No worries. With the remake coming out, the original Piranha and its sequel got a nice new DVD release for all to enjoy. Since I had seen neither, I decided to make it Piranha Day and watch them both before I saw the remake. Everyone else has put up reviews for the original, but so far nothing that I've seen for the sequel. So I'm reviewing that one instead.

On my last post, I mentioned something about not having given a bad review before. Well, it's time to change that.

Piranha 2: The Spawning sucked! Like, it sucked really hard. There's just a lot of weird ass shit going on here, which we get a taste of right off the bat. First of all, the DVD transfer is quite shitty. Fuzzy picture, no widescreen. Is this the best they could do?

The first scene is some scuba divers swimming into an old ship wreck. Okay, cool. Then they start taking their clothes off and making out, as if they are going to have sex UNDER WATER! I'm not entirely sure that's even possible. Luckily though, these idiots soon become piranha-food and the movie finally starts. Will it get better from here?

Mother and son?????

Perhaps no. The next scene is, let's just say it's really creepy. In a hotel room, a young man is teasing a half-naked woman lying in bed with a dead fish that he caught. She wakes up and they start playing around and laughing, obviously a happy and loving couple. They talk a little more and then we hear that they're not a happy couple, THEY'RE MOTHER AND SON! Please tell me that I'm not the only one who thought they were together. Please. I'll feel so much better.

The plot doesn't really go anywhere, at least nowhere interesting. Turns out the mother is a scuba instructor at this hotel who gets one of her guests eaten by the piranha; her ex-husband is the police (Lance Henriksen, you devil, you) investigating; her son runs off on a sailboat with a snooty guy and a hot chick; some other random naked hot chicks try to steal food from the hotel; a really annoying vacationing couple give some of the worst performances in a movie EVER... oh and some dude tries to get on with the mother character but he really knows more about the piranha than he lets on. Oi, you know, I can't even remember any of these characters' names and I really don't want to go look them up. I don't care.

Oh, he's kinda cute.

At least they upped the ante with Piranha 2 and made these man-eating fish now flying man-eating fish. I couldn't have hoped for more. Yes, the piranha have these weird fin-like wings that let them come flying out of the water - and in one memorable scene, out of the chest cavity of a dead body - to bite you on the neck and kill you. The camera lingers long enough for you to get a good laugh at the special effects. At least they tried a little harder than just showing quick cuts of fish wriggling underwater like we saw in the original. No, for this amazing sequel we've got full-on rubber fish on strings that the actors hold to their necks instead of making it appear as though they're trying to fight them off.

The only good scene in the movie.

I'm not a Cameron-hater. I loooooove The Abyss and a few other things he's done, but Piranha 2 is an embarrassment. Horribly bad acting, only a few good gore scenes, and a shit-ton of ridiculous characters that I could care less about. Seriously, the vacationing couple that kept talking about what was included in their hotel package? They are the only ones who needed to die a painful, agonizing death. The cougar who kept hitting on the towel boy? Who are all these idiots and why we do have to keep watching stupid scenes with them? Damn you, Piranha 2! Damn you to hell!

The climax is simply hilarious. All the hotel guests head to the beach at midnight to collect grunion, and instead the piranha come flying out of the water, attacking and killing several people most retardedly. The piranha are finally exterminated when this savvy team of experts - you know, a scuba instructor and a fish police dude - somehow get the piranha back to the ship wreck and then blow them up. Like, how did they know that ALL of the piranha were there? How did the mother not get blown to hell, too? A thinkin' (wo)man's movie, this is NOT.

Shameful sequel to the highly enjoyable Piranha. I can only hope that the remake is better.