Time: 95 Minutes
Age Rating: R13
Cast:
Bradford Dillman as Paul Grogan
Heather Menzies as Maggie McKeown
Kevin McCarthy as Dr. Robert Hoak
Keenan Wynn as Jack
Dick Miller as Buck Gardner
Barbara Steele as Dr. Mengers
Belinda Balaski as Betsy
Director: Joe Dante

Maggie McKeown, a skiptracer, empties a pool in an abandoned compound while investigating the disappearance of two teenagers and unknowingly releases a deadly school of fish in a local river.

I had heard of the Piranha movies, they seemed to be trashy horror thrillers largely inspired by Jaws. I wasn’t really interested in watching it, but the fact that the sequel is directed by James Cameron was what ultimately got me to watch the first film. While I wasn’t expecting much from the movie going, I was somehow left disappointed by what I saw.

As expected, Piranha is very campy and is deliberately calling back to B-movie schlock. As said before, it is also unapologetically riffing on Jaws, and is a rather cheap version of that. The plot very thin and simple, focussing on genetically modified and lethal piranhas who get loose and start killing people. While it sounds like it could be fun, it really didn’t do much for me. The first and second acts are very uninteresting. A riff on Jaws isn’t inherently bad, but it really doesn’t do anything original, and it is disappointingly conventional. It gets very repetitive and many of the situations involving the piranhas become dull after a while. Its also a very tonally confused movie, obviously there’s plenty of humour, and there’s a lot in the movie that makes it really hard for you to take anything seriously. At the same time, it plays things more seriously than I expected it to. Thankfully, the final act makes up for a lot of the film, as it gets into the over the top silliness that I wanted from the movie.

It is directed by Joe Dante and this is one of his earlier movies. With its style and approach, it leans towards being a low budget B movie exploitative type of film, a bit schlocky, if not as over the top as I thought it would be. The piranhas are surprisingly practical and animatronic, which does add a sort of charm to them at the very least. There’s definitely plenty of piranhas going wild and eating people, but it relies on dread and implications of violence rather than putting the gore right in your face (even though there is a lot of blood).

Piranha is a mildly entertaining and really silly B movie schlock that’s unfortunately not goofy enough to be all that entertaining until the third act. It has its moments, but generally it was rather boring and forgettable.