From director Alexandre Aja ("High Tension") comes this remake of the 70s B-horror flick. Elisabeth Shue stars as the sheriff of a desert party town - a popular spring break destination with a fictional lake based on the real Lake Havasu. When an earthquake unleashes prehistoric piranha that have been living in an underground lake, all hell breaks loose as hot college coeds start getting devoured faster than you can say "Wet T-Shirt Contest". With a premise that is laughable at best, and a screenplay that reads more like a "Girls Gone Wild" video than a horror film, this movie takes the cake for the biggest piece of schlock released in 2010. And yet, it somehow manages to be insanely entertaining, campy fun. Everything about this movie is gratuitous: the blood, guts, and nudity, but the film doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. It embraces its vulgar trashiness with gusto and pride, and goes for broke on the gross-out factor. Forget detached limbs or gouged-out eyeballs... there is a scene where a severed penis is regurgitated by one of the carnivorous fish, and another scene where all that's left of a blond, bikini-clad bimbo is a silicone implant. Yes, it's disgusting, immature, and over-the-top, but at the basest level it works, and - if you can stomach it - will bring out the giddy, 12-year old boy in you. Besides having the honor of most fake blood used on a movie set, "Piranha" won't be getting many accolades. But it falls neatly into the "so bad, it's good" category, and that's not such a bad place to be.
3 out of 5 stars
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