It is Spring Break at sunny Lake Victoria, and thousands of horny college students have descended upon the usually quiet small township in order to make Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue) and her deputy Fallon’s (Ving Rhames) lives a bit more hectic. But thanks to a seismic event something else entirely is about to transform them into a living hell, swarms of prehistoric piranha unleashed upon the unsuspecting partiers and they’re hungry for human flesh!

Ving Rhames gets bloody in Piranha 3D © Dimension Films

A very loose remake of the 1978 Joe Dante-directed and John Sayles-scripted B-movie classic, Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D is a gross-out hoot that can be a heck of a lot of fun. The man behind the amazingly disgusting and masterfully scary The Hills Have Eyes remake as well as the great-until-the-final-twist-ruins-everything High Tension completely outdoes himself, the gore impresario unleashing a ten minute extended bit of carnage so gloriously nasty genre fans will be doing cartwheels in the lobby afterwards.

But just because that’s so don’t think that makes this drive-in wannabe quite as wonderful as it thinks it is. Pete Goldfinger (Sorority Row) and Josh Stolberg’s (Good Luck Chuck) is pure Syfy Channel cheese, so unbelievably stupid it almost makes Spring Break Shark Attack and Mega Piranha look like Oscar-winning classics. It has none of the wit or satirical smarts of Dante and Sayles’ original, choosing instead to play at the shallow end of the wading pool figuring audiences won’t care a single bit that what they’ve come up with is complete and total sophomoric nonsense.

Granted, they’re probably right for thinking that way. Aja may not have come out of the Roger Corman factory like Dante and Sayles did but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand the elements that make B-movie horror shows become cult phenomena. This movie offers up so much blood, guts and gore it comes very close to putting Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo to shame. Add to that the spectacular amount of creatively utilized nudity and sexual innuendo and you’ve got something bordering on the iconic, the director creating a stew so shockingly prurient yet also so stupendously sickening I couldn’t help but come away impressed.

It must be said that the CGI effects, especially pretty much all of the underwater sequences, are quite terribly realized. Additionally, even though the 3D for this one has been publicized and touted from here to eternity this is another Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender post-conversion effort meaning visually much of it can leave a lot to be desired. While there are exceptions a lot of the film looks way too dark, especially a sequence involving a team of seismologists unwittingly journeying into the piranha’s cave. There is also the case of some occasional ghosting, Shue and company sometimes appearing to have multiple heads of hair even though one is all they are supposed to have.

That said, or maybe because of all I just said, Piranha 3D can be a total blast. The cast is having a grand old time, most of them playing it totally straight save for a hyper and enjoyably energetic Jerry O'Connell doing his best Joe Francis (the founder of Girls Gone Wild) impersonation and a bug-eyed Christopher Llyod breaking out his Doc Brown bag of tricks. I adored the Richard Dreyfuss cameo, while an underwater sequence between Kelly Brook and Riley Steele almost has to be seen to be believed.

Then there is the finale. Aja breaks out all his best tricks. He finds so many unique ways to kill off inebriated college students (a group for whatever reason that includes Eli Roth) I was absolutely blown away by his morbidly disgusting creativity. There are sight gags here that boggle the mind and churn the stomach, one silly yet nauseating bit involving one signature character’s, um, let’s just call it a favorite appendage, so over the top it’s downright awesome.  

Look, you know who you are if a movie called Piranha 3D is the kind of thing you get excited about seeing. Seen with a group of friends and in a packed theatre it is doubtful that if this is your cup of tea you’re not going to walk away ecstatic afterwards. Aja packs everything he can inside of this lakeside escapade, and if the sight of pretty teenagers and nubile twenty-somethings getting ripped to shreds in every way imaginable appeals than this is one remake you should sink your teeth into immediately.