Plot: Alexandre Aja’s remake of Joe Dante’s campy 1978 horror film, is itself a satire of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. When an earthquake tears open the bottom of Lake Havasu, schools of carnivorous piranhas are released from their underwater lair, and the lake turns into a bloody, frenzied death trap for unwitting water-goers during spring break.

My Review: I wasn’t expecting too much from this movie to be honest. I hadn’t seen the original movie, but I took it to be one of those movies that was not serious at all. I guess a “B” movie. I’m not really into those types of films and that’s what I figured the original was, and the remake was going to be like. However, I ended up being a little surprised.

The movie starts off with none other then Richard Dreyfuss sitting in a boat singing & fishing. An Earthquake strikes, bringing out the hungry fishies. Later on we discover his name is Matt, homage to his character from Jaws (which if you followed the release of this on any horror sites you‘d probably already know it as it leaked long before the movie was released). And its not the only thing this movie has in common with JAWS. You’ll notice small things here an there that also reference JAWS.

The story was an easy one. There is an Earthquake and these “extinct” piranhas are broken out from their cave. The town is a big vacation spot for spring breakers who of course refuse to get out of the water and end up as fish food. Our #1 character is a young kid (I’m guessing a teenager, but I’m not sure they ever say) who’s mother happens to be the towns sheriff. He’s got a little brother and sister that he’s supposed to be babysitting. But instead he leaves them alone to go check out the spring breakers. Of course that will come back to bite him in the ass later. Sometimes you worry about these “disaster” movies that feature families cause they always have to rescue someone. But that didn’t really happen, or at least it wasn’t this huge part of the movie.

Gore/FX: The gore was VERY good (outside of the water), and some pretty gross. However, the major downfall to this movie is the CGI. Its pretty bad. Maybe it wasn’t that bad in 3D, but I wasn’t watching in theater 3D. I just watched at home on my 47” HD TV in HD. And it was very unrealistic and stupid looking. It sorta ruined the movie for me as one moment it would be a good shot of gore, then the next moment a silly totally unrealistic scene with bad CGI. I enjoyed the penis scene, but again ruined by CGI. As I said, I haven’t seen the original, but it makes me wonder what those piranhas looked like.

Sexual Content: Well…it does take place during Spring Break, but there isn’t as much nudity as I was lead to believe. I had heard that there was nudity all over the place. There are a few boob shots, wet t-shirt shots, and a penis shot (which was interesting, but looked horrible), but it isn’t any crazy amount. With that being said. There is a group sorta like Girls Gone Wild, and they keep saying they are shooting porn, but I didn’t see anything really pornish LOL. It was like a watered down version of Girls Gone Wild.

Acting: There were a LOT of familiar faces in this movie which is, I think, another reason the horrible CGI was tolerable (cause really that was the only bad thing about the movie). Richard Dreyfuss, Ving Rhames, Elisabeth Shue, Christopher Lloyd, Eli Roth, Jerry O’Connell, Steven R. McQueen (from my current favorite show, The Vampire Diaries), Ricardo Chavita, and more.

Overall: This is a toughie to rate. On one hand, the acting is good, the gore is decent, the plot fine. But they used too much BAD CGI which made it kinda crappy. However, the movie was entertaining and I would watch it again.

[rating:3/5]

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