Creature
Prehistoric Piranha
Walking Piranha

Alternate Titles
3D Piranha 2

Country
USA

Director
John Gulager

Writers
Patrick Melton
Marcus Dunstan
Joel Soisson

Story

“Life isn’t going great for Maddy when she returns home to find that her greedy step-father has sullied her family’s water park with nude pools, underwater cameras and ‘water certified’ strippers instead of lifeguards. However when she discovers that the park is illegally draining water from an underground lake, Maddy must stop a school of Prehistoric Piranha before they invade the park and feast on the happy swimmers.”

Cast

• Danielle Panabaker – Maddy
• Matt Bush – Barry
• Chris Zylka – Kyle
• David Koechner – Chet
• David Hasselhoff – Himself
• Christoper Lloyd – Mr Goodman
• Ving Rhames – Deputy Fallon
• Paul Scheer – Andrew
• Gary Busey – Clayton

Creature Connections

• Anaconda 3 – David Hasselhoff
• Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys – Christopher Lloyd
• Piranha 3D – Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames, Paul Scheer
• Shark Night 3D – Chris Zylka
• Snakes on a Plane – David Koechner

Trailer

Gallery

Review

The smaller budgeted 3D sequel to the hit Piranha 3D that takes everything that made the first one good and pushes it to the extreme. A film with its tongue driven so thoroughly into its cheek that it emerges out the other side… in 3D!

Life isn’t going great for Maddy when she returns home to find that her greedy step-father has sullied her family’s water park with nude pools, underwater cameras and ‘water certified’ strippers instead of lifeguards. However when she discovers that the park is illegally draining water from an underground lake, Maddy must stop a school of Prehistoric Piranha before they invade the park and feast on the happy swimmers.

In an interview with writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (of Saw and The Collector fame) they stated that if Piranha 3D was the perfect throwback to 70’s suspenseful creature features then they wanted the sequel to represent the gratuitous, in-your-face excess of the 80’s. And to be honest, they nailed it.

As you probably noticed, the plot to the film is ridiculous, the amount of nudity is ridiculous, the amount of gore is ridiculous, the returning actors are ridiculous, the guest stars are ridiculous, the use of 3D is ridiculous, hell, and even the title is ridiculous. If you can accept all of that, then you are in for an experience like no other.

The cast can be split into 3 categories. The new casts are all pretty good; Danielle Panabaker is still one of the best actresses in horror today, Matt Bush wins the award for most likeable character in the film, Chris Zylka is charming yet conniving and David Koechner plays the over-the-top villain as only he knows how. The returning cast all boost their performances to the max, Christopher Lloyd is still a skittish but enthusiastic Piranha expert (now defamed for his book on walking piranha), Ving Rhames returns as Deputy Fallon now a double amputee with a fear of water and Paul Scheer, the disappearing cameraman, returns as Fallon’s care worker. The guest stars blow it out of the water though; Gary Busey brings his trademark intensity to his opening sequence and David Hasselhoff nails his role as a washed-up version of himself perfectly executing every punch-line at his own expense.

With a massively reduced budget (only a 1/5th of the first film), Piranha 3DD opts for . The running time is criminally short and the film is horribly padded out with repeated shots and a post-fade out line-up that is beyond ridiculous. The story concludes and we fade out, only to then be treated to a fake music video for David Hasselhoff, credits interspersed with outtakes and a pointless deleted scene at the very scene. So when you look at the’82 minutes’ running time, it’s actually more like 70 minutes or less. On the one hand, I respect that they had a terribly short film so they chucked in lots of extras to give the audience a little bit more, but on the other, I wish that they had just made a longer movie.

Whilst the Piranha puppetry is still really cool, the CGI stuff still really sucks, so take that as you will. The desire to be more disgusting occasionally comes across as cruel rather than funny (like any comic book written by Mark Millar in the last 5 years). Some of the acting from the lesser parts is truly awful. Some of the gore effects are pretty bad and the science of the film barely holds together.

But having said all of that, the highlights of the film are enough to make it so damn enjoyable. I was one of the people lucky enough to see both Piranha 3D and Piranha 3DD in the cinema and whilst the 3D is at times shaky (the opening sequence of 3DD is terrible for ghosting) I had a fantastic time at both films. So rather than having just one highlight, here are some of my favorite quotes and moments.

Highlights

David Hasselhoff’s Anaconda 3 reference
David Hasselhoff’s Baywatch reference
Chris Zylka’s mental breakdown and demise
The Hitchcock dolly zoom joke (seriously they turned a focus pull into a successful joke)
Christopher Lloyd’s sequel hook
“Bring me my legs”
“I’m not afraid of some punk ass water”
“Josh cut off his penis because something fell out of my vagina”