Tagged: Piranha 3D
Halloween Horror Movie Month: High Tension (2003)
I don’t care who you think it may be showing up to your door at 4 a.m, you always gotta bring a weapon or crazy shit like this happens.
Marie (Cécile de France) and Alex (Maïwenn Le Besco) are two young women intent on spending a quiet weekend in the country with Alex’s family. When a brutal killer turns up and abducts Alex, slaughtering her family in the process, it’s up to Marie to save her friend before she becomes the killer’s next victim.
This is one of those infamous horror movies from the early 21st Century that dared to push the limit. This, along with other splatter-horror flicks like Hostel, Saw, The Descent, and many others just said, “Hey horror! We’re going to make you one bad-ass mothatrucka again and get you away from all of those sissy, J-horror remakes that are all rated PG-13.” Okay, maybe none of them said those exact words but it doesn’t matter, because these guys really pushed the element and one of those main directors who did was Alexandre Aja.
Now if anybody has seen Piranha 3D (the original that came out in 2010, not that sequel shit that ruined my eyes) you have to know what this director can do. He offers some blood, gore, tension, sleaziness, but altogether, a fun time. Here, that is exactly the case and it provides for one of the more enjoyable and tense pieces of horror that I have seen in quite some time. The story starts off boring with a bunch of lame-ass English dubs that almost make this movie look like a Bruce Lee kung-fu movie from the 70′s and I really thought it was going to be a whole distraction. Then, one of the girls start to masturbate and it’s really just random and I thought to myself, “Jeezus, this film is just losing more and more points by the minute.” But then, there’s a knock at the door, and then thankfully, that’s when everything really started to come together in one, full-swing.
One thing you should be warned about with this flick is that it is downright disgusting at points. Aja does a good job of keeping the violence very subtle at times, but when the guy wants to get in-your-face about it, then he doesn’t leave anything out at all. Not a single organ is left unseen here and it is at times, very gruesome and discomforting to watch, but it was pretty neat how he allowed the gore to bring real color to some scenes that seemed like it needed it. There’s this one scene that I’m pretty sure many of you people have seen where one of the girls gets into a car, and the bad-guy with the buzz-saw comes after her and just shreds-up the driver of the car and it creates a huge blood-splash that goes everywhere in the car. It’s a very wonderful shot and one of the very few instances where Aja knows how to use his gore to his effect and strength.
Seeing that this film is called High Tension, I went in expecting that and that is exactly what I got with this flick. The whole element behind this film that intrigued me was how most of it is shot in real-time where we are simply following the events as they happen and there is barely anything ever left out. This allows us to feel like we are right there for this torturous ride and some of the scenes that Aja places in here, just gave me chills going all throughout my spine and it had me wondering just what was going to happen next. Sadly, what happened next was probably one of the main elements about this film that pissed me off.
The whole film for about an hour or so, was absolutely kicking ass and I really could not get enough of it but then, for some odd reason, Aja felt the need to add in a nice little twist because all horror films need one, right? In horror films, people can’t just kill people because they like it, right? Without giving too much away, the twist at the end makes this whole film seem pretty dumb and almost very unbelievable. It’s sort of like the horror film Silent House that came out recently, it has a twist that’s supposed to be one, big clever change-up of the whole story, and it doesn’t add anything else other than a bunch of confusion from people who don’t need it, especially when they are just letting their brains rot on horror movies. It wasn’t so bad to the point of where I was almost fed-up with the whole film, but it definitely changed my opinion on my final score.
As for the acting, it’s pretty good even though they aren’t really given much dialogue to work with here. Cécile de France has a good look as Marie because she doesn’t really seem like the type of strong-willed chick that would be willing to stay alive and face-off against this dude, but somehow she shows a great deal of strength and aggression in a role that actually needed it, in my opinion. I also have to give bonus points to the guy who plays the killer because he doesn’t really get the chance to show his full face until the very end, but the whole time he is just terribly intimidating and scary, and it was a pretty good idea on the part of Aja to give us a faceless killer. Just adds more creepiness to him as a whole.
Consensus: Though the plot twist really shakes things up by the end, and in a bad way, High Tension still delivers on the, ahem, tension, blood, and gore that helps further the plot more and more into one sick journey that never seems to stop.
7/10=Rental!!
Piranha 3DD (2012)
Piranha’s just aren’t cool. Face it.
There’s something in the water again. And this time no one is safe from the flesh eating fish as they sink their razor sharp teeth into the visitors of the best summer attraction, The Big Wet Water Park.
Even though it has its haters, Piranha 3D was still a fun movie because it didn’t take itself too seriously, was gory as hell, and had a lot of unabashed fun to it that made it worth watching (especially if you’re buddies one night and looking for entertainment and you have no beer). However, they should have just left it that and stayed away from more Piranha’s cause honestly, who the hell cares?
This is the first flick to ever come out in theaters and Video-On-Demand at the same time, but if you want to save your money and not hate everything about yourself, just stay at home and not bother watching it. First of all, director John Gulager doesn’t do shit here with this promising premise, or anything else he has at his display either. The film looked as if it had no budget whatsoever, and half of the sets/effects are used from the first movie (pretty freakin’ obvious, too); all of the energy that the first one had, is lost in this sequel because it doesn’t even feel like these guys made this movie with the word “fun” in mind, they just tried to cash in on the “Piranha” name; and the scares just weren’t here at all. I know that these types of films aren’t really depending on being scary, but there wasn’t even a single “boo” moment to get me through here and there. Everything just sort of happened with no care whatsoever.
Also, the writing was just freakin’ terrible. The first flick had bits of humor here and there, but this film barely had any which really disappointed me because when you have a plot filled with piranha’s, water, boobs, and gore, you should be gettin’ a laugh-out-loud riot like the first. Instead, you just get some shit that tries hard as hell to be funny with it’s “look at me being quirky and weird” fashion, and ends up not even bringing a chuckle out of me once. Then again, humor is subjective so maybe you’ll find a lot more to laugh at than my sorry-ass did.
Anybody that’s going to see this film (or staying home to watch this, what I suggest more) knows that there’s going to be plenty of boobs and blood. Actually, that’s exactly what you get and I can say that the film does deliver on that promise but not with the same intensity as the first. The memorable sequence in the first one where all of the piranha’s come into invade the lake, killing and ripping to sheds, thousands and thousands of people was a freakin’ awesome scene and is sort of here too, but not with the same kinetic or creative energy as that one. It was just boring, with blood and gore that seemed too tame for a sequel like this, and the naked chicks weren’t even hot. They were just crass, and even though that’s not a bad thing for some people, for me, it just should have been placed better.
If there is anything that’s one bit of a redeeming quality for this flick, it’s David Hasselhoff playing the one character he plays to perfection: David Hasselhoff. Hasselhoff’s extended-cameo is actually pretty funny but definitely not used in the right way. It almost seemed like the film didn’t know what to do with him so they just stuck a bunch of Baywatch-like scenes in there and made it seem like they were doing something so funny and collective with him. It’s weird, he’s easily the best thing in this movie but he is also the most disappointing aspect of it as well. Don’t Hassle the Hoff, especially when you put him in a piece of shit like this.
As for the rest of the cast, they all try their hardest but nobody can really get past the paper-thin characters here. Katrina Bowden and Danielle Panabaker were nice ladies to look at, but ultimately, just seemed terribly bland; David Koechner usually can make me laugh in anything he does, but didn’t have me chuckle once at him; and Ving Rhames shows up to give this film a spark of energy and fun that it needed, but is also just another reminder as to how and why the first flick was so much better and so much fun in the first place. Also, be on the look-out for a Gary Busey cameo that sucks. Honestly, how the hell can you mess up a Gary Busey cameo!?!?
Consensus: Piranha 3DD tries it hardest to be like the first, but is unoriginal, unimaginative, has no sense of what’s funny or what humor is, features plenty of boobs and gore but not as much as it should, and is a sequel that doesn’t do anything other than try to cash-in on the “Piranha” name. Fuck this shit.
1/10=Total and Utter Crap!!!
