Devil (2010)

There are those films that you simply have got to see, films for which you have waited in anticipation for months, even years, films that can't possibly disappoint you. For me, every new film by either Darren Aronofsky or David Cronenberg is an immediate must-see. It doesn't matter if the film gets panned by every possible critic or if it gets booed by every single festival-goer in the world. I will still be there on opening night with a ticket in my hand and a large smile on my face. But then, there are those films that you know you are going to hate, films for which the most reliable critics award 1 star or no stars at all, films tagged with such enticing epithets as "dull", "vain", or worst, "moralistic". These films can entice you just as much for you often end up convincing yourself that they can't possibly be as bad as people say they are. The worst the reviews, the greater the curiosity, which is precisely what drove me toward Devil. Personally, I think that the general hatred that has been directed at M. Night Shyamalan in recent years is wholly unjustified. Hell, The Happening (2008) wasn't so bad. At least, it wasn't nearly as bad as people described it. So I thought maybe, just maybe, Devil could prove itself to be a happy surprise. Truth is, I didn't really believe it. And although I wasn't completely pissed off with the film, I must say that it is every bit as bad as the most virulent critics said.

The premise of Devil is intriguing. Handled differently, it could've resulted in a worthy film. The main plotline takes place almost entirely in camera as five "sinners" are trapped in an elevator wherein the Devil lurks, disguised as a human and hellbent on torturing his carefully-selected victims prior to dragging their souls to the Lake of Fire. This would be a fine set-up if psychological insight had been used to characterize the cunning outsider and to forward the narrative instead of crude morality, which drives and hampers the film at the same time. But none is so lucky as to find an inkling of subtlety in this film. The subplot involves a disillusioned police detective slowly recovering from the murder of his wife and child as well as a handful of supporting characters, each more expandable than the last, all of them watching helplessly as the prisoners are offed one by one. Just like every other character in the film, the detective is a mere symbol pertaining to a moral lesson. Narratively, he is purely instrumental, being just competent enough to gather intel that merely validates what the voice-over has made abundantly clear, namely that the entrapped characters are all guilty of a crime punishable by the Devil, while at the same time being just incompetent enough to misinterpret a detail and thus validate the atrocious twist pertaining to the Devil's identity. In the end, what the film teaches you is that, like the characters in the film, humans are mere pawns in a game of chess between God and the Devil. And the only thing we can do to save our souls is abide by God's laws. Contrarily to the apparent mandate of The Night Chronicles (of which Devil is the first of three chapters), which is to set supernatural thrillers in contemporary urban milieux, what we have here is a dated moral fable that would feel more at home in illuminated Medieval tomes.

Only by abiding to God's laws can we set the world straight

Where to begin? What's the single worst thing about Devil? Is it the annoying voice-over that explicitly foreshadows every event in the film, rendering all narrative development useless? Is it the constant recourse to divine intervention as a way to instantly justify any logical implausibility? Is it the voluntary slimming of narrative possibilities imposed by the main set? Is it the film's infuriating sense of morality? The atrocious twist ending? The erratic pace? The suspiciously lenient PG-13 rating? Honestly, I find it hard to summarize my complaints about this film. It seems that nothing is worthy of any praise here but the decent production values. Narratively, Devil is more than anemic, it is completely self-defeating. There is no real suspense to speak of, but tiny little bits thereof intercut with lengthy and entirely useless scenes of dreary police investigation. Not only is the film suffocatingly moralistic, but its very morality is highly dubious in nature. As for the ending, it merely pushes the film an extra mile down the narrow pit in which it started falling from frame one.

Speaking of frame one, you couldn't do worse in terms of see-through symbolism. This frame shows the skyline of downtime Philadelphia but in reverse. Actually, the entire credits are made up of skyscrapers pointing toward the ground, illustrating how our modern society is corrupt and hell-bound. But despite all this, despite the generalized decay of the moral fabric of society, only five people will be punished for it, five people selected to cover the entire range of crimes against God: the thief, the whore, the liar, the brute and the murderer. And although it would seem unfair to torture five sinners in a place where sin is endemic, simply consider this: God works in mysterious ways, that is by allowing the five sacrificial victims to get trapped in an elevator and be picked off one by one by the Devil. Personally, I believe that the existence of the Devil doesn't prove the existence of God, but rather disproves it, as do all forms of non-human evil. Metaphysics aside, divinities here have complete control over the narrative, and this gives ample justification for the screenwriters to revel in their apathy. You see, it is the Devil who has trapped the five sinners and it is He who decides their fate in accordance with the folktale narrated during the opening voice-over. Everything is written in advance and thus, the trials and tribulations of the firemen and detectives trying to rescue them are completely meaningless. What's worse is that the film explicitly insists on the meaninglessness of their actions. By constantly resorting to dreary voice-overs exposing the Devil's omnipotence, the screenwriters effectively defuse every plot point and every set piece they have toiled to create. There is a scene in which firemen are brought in to try and force the elevator doors and saw through the concrete walls surrounding the shaft. And right when they begin to set up, we are informed by "God's voice" (voice-over narration) that the Devil will never allow force to undermine his plans. So, we immediately know for a fact that the firemen's actions are useless. No suspense, no guessing, no sense either in showing us lengthy scenes wherein they tear through concrete with large circular saws. No sense elsewhere than in exposing and insisting on the omnipotence of the Devil and his divine insight as to what constitutes crimes punishable by psychological torture and death. Narratively, this is incredibly convenient as there is no need to explain how a virtual army of policemen and firemen can fail to force open an elevator door, to rewire the electrical current or even slide down the wires in the shaft onto the top of the cabin. "The Devil" explains it all. Hence, narrative depth is not only needless, it is impossible. What results is an excruciatingly boring, self-spoiling film in which nothing is relevant but the dubious central moral that preaches repentance to purse-snatchers and murderers alike, leaving only the latter alive because they are able to shed more tears in the face of death.

Hopefully, I won't spoil any enjoyment you might hypothetically have in watching the film when I tell you that the murderer in the group is spared by the Devil at the last minute in a typically Shyamalan-esque twist that will have you tightening your fist and grinding your teeth. You see, the murderous character is the last one standing and he must thus face the Devil. The Dark One, characterized only by oil-black retinas, towers above him and announces both their imminent departure toward the pits of Hell, at which point the criminal suddenly becomes repentant, shedding tears and begging for forgiveness. When he finally confesses his crimes to the police over the C.B., the Devil has no other choice than to let him live for he has atoned and his soul is now cleansed of the burden of sin. As a viewer, the Devil's lenience is really hard to swallow since the murderer's "good deed" is strangely akin to a deathbed confession, i.e. one you make solely out of fear of dying. However "sincere" this confession may be, what worth can it possibly have considering the circumstances under which it was made? The worth it does have is strictly determined by supernatural forces, and thus the rule of law becomes irrelevant and so too become the higher human values of forgiveness, understanding and compassion. By giving the gods an unconditional moral superiority, the film ends up relegating humanity once more to the cavern of ignorance and helplessness wherein the preachers of orthodoxy would like their followers to remain till the end of days. According to the tagline, "bad things happen for a reason", but that kind of logic is very problematic as well because although I understand why criminals need to be confronted with their crimes, this presupposes divine interference in the affairs of men, whom have invented law and social sciences to insure a basic, non-moral understanding of criminality. More importantly though, it presupposes that the good samaritans killed in the process of judging the sinners are necessary casualties... which is bullshit! I mean, where was God when the elevator mechanic and aging security guard who selflessly tried to lend a hand met with horrible deaths? Honestly, it takes a seriously twisted person to pretend that "bad things happen for a reason", unless they're speaking of a purely extraterrestrial reason, such as the self-enjoyment of divinities who laugh at humans and restrict us to rigid codes of conduct without taking anything else than our most reproachable acts into consideration. For one, I believe that drama is born out of human emotions, deeply ingrained emotions which can seep through the screen, page or canvas and into the hearts of the viewers or readers. Christian morality has no place in any form of drama for it is entirely extraterrestrial and completely out of touch with the true emotional concerns of human beings. Trying to sort individuals according to their various degrees of decency is like trying to fit square pegs in round holes; it doesn't take into account the full gamut of human emotions and the many circumstances leading to crime. All in all, the recourse to divinity as an all-encompassing explanation for the events onscreen reveals not only the screenwriters' complacency and laziness, but also their contempt for the idea of humanity as a self-defining, willful and free race.

The Devil's omnipotence is the tube of Crazy glue that

holds the screenplay together like broken china

Being a whodunit at heart, Devil is also impaired by the restrictive elevator set. Let me just ask a question here: how do you manage to hide the identity of a killer whose crimes are committed within a few feet of five people? The answer is: you can't, at least not without using some very cheap narrative gymnastics pertaining also to the overwhelming influence of divinity within the scenario. You see, the Devil can do anything he pleases, least of which is to magically turn off the ceiling lights of an elevator. Yep, you read that correctly: right before every murder, the lights flicker and the cabin is suddenly plunged in darkness. Right before every murder. Then, you hear screams and muffled sounds meant to let you know that "something nasty is going on", the nature of which remains unclear until you witness the aftermath. Personally, I couldn't believe my eyes when I realized that this would be a recurring M.O.. I was left aghast by the screenwriters' lack of imagination. I mean, I'm not talking of a single occurrence here, I'm talking systematic lights out whenever a crime is about to take place. This only makes the narrative even more predictable and frankly dishonest toward the viewer, who should at least be given decent clues in order to try and decipher the mystery of the Devil's identity. What this brought me to realize is that it takes some really efficient writing, and some highly competent acting, to manage a successful thriller contained in camera, especially if it is a whodunit! It takes subtle psychological insight and a rare sense of mise-en-scène, which is found to be completely lacking here. By using the cheapest, most crude way of turning the five victims against one another, that is by piling up corpses killed in the most illogical, unpredictable ways possible, the screenwriters end up brushing away the most interesting aspects of the Devil's persona, namely his overwhelming power of suggestion and ruthless cunning. In order words, they could've had the Devil using his forked tongue in order to manipulate the characters toward murder. This would have added some much-needed psychological depth to the scenario and kept the action out in the open, instead of covering it up with convenient shadows, which would have further warranted the in camera setting. By instead choosing the Devil's omnipotence as his distinctive feature and using this feature to glue the entire narrative together, the screenwriters have chosen the easy way out, ruining the efficiency of psychological tension and making puppets out of all the human characters and human viewers assembled to watch helplessly as their fellowmen are tried and sentenced outside of all socially established norms and regulations. Again, Devil is not simply a lazy film, it is a deeply offensive film for anybody who believes in the freedom of the human spirit.

Devil is less of a psychological thriller than a whodunit,

which is why it falls flat on its face

If at least the action would've been kept within the boundaries of the cabin, without any cut to other locales and the meaningless actions occurring therein, the film could've at least managed to create some tension. But as it is, every time the tempers flare, every time you feel that something exciting is about to happen, the film cuts from inside the cabin to a shot of some people observing the scene. Tension is immediately defused at the profit of irrelevant exposition. And that's your cue, folks: it's time to get up, get another beer. No need to pause the film, just get up and walk slowly to the kitchen, open the fridge, maybe scratch your ass a bit, consider the contents of the fridge. Then you can take a peek in the pantry; maybe there are some leftover cereals in there. Oh yes! And don't forget the beer! Believe me, you're gonna need that beer... Of course, you can also turn off your DVD player and indulge in another activity, which is what I would recommend. Make love instead, read a book, clean the living room: use your imagination, which isn't something you will be able to achieve by watching Devil. Personally, when I first read the film's synopsis, I was convinced that the entrapment of the five characters would be the cornerstone of tension-building and narrative development. I hadn't even thought that there could be a police investigation tacked on or any form of meddling with the purity of the claustrophobic thriller, which needs to be self-sustained lest it risks losing all of its power. Here, the reason for the entrapment is made overly explicit and the characters are exposed from outside, making the crux of the narrative lie elsewhere than in the immediate environment of these characters. This completely undermines the sense of immediacy inherent to in camera narratives. For those who know the film Cube (1997), I propose the following analogy: what if the scenes wherein the characters in the cube discuss their fate were intercut with scenes outside the cube. What would that do for you? Would it lessen tension? Imagine worse. Imagine that there was a military man monitoring the activities within the cube, to whom the film would cut whenever tension rose too feverishly between the entrapped characters. What would that do for you? What if that military man would reveal the entire purpose of the cube within the opening voice-over? What if Leaven and company were revealed as a bunch of criminals punished by a higher moral authority? Any combination of such occurrences would ruin the film. And every time Devil cut from the elevator cabin to the control room, I felt I was watching Cube and its architect was suddenly revealed, at the thought of which I narrowly choked on an imaginary plastic button.

What if Cube had had a control room wherein Benthamian observers

could exchange platitudes while Quentin was brutalizing Worth?

Another thing that bugged me about the film is its rating. Why is the film rated PG-13 when it shows slashed throats, impaled jugulars, twisted heads, and burned-out faces whereas Clerks (1994) and Office Space (1999) get NC-17 and R ratings respectively for some naughty language and sexual references? Is this the fruit of God's intervention? Is God protecting Devil because it encourages sinners to confess? For one, I believe that God is truly at work here, manifesting Himself through his minions at the MPAA who would soon prefer exposing youths to violence, especially if that violence is warranted by a Christian moral, than to foul language, which risks turning them into rebellious teens liable to hurt God's ears with biting profanity. The most twisted aspect of such censorship is that it displays a dangerously anachronistic sense of morality. Whereas Devil merely preaches the olden principles of a religion completely out of synch with modernity, Clerks and Office Space both convey equally wholesome, but entirely more relevant messages about self-responsibility and about love. Their outlook on life is not a sterile affair of stagnant moral values, but rather a lively dialogue about what makes humans tick and how they can better themselves. If these films contain foul language and sexual allusions, it is precisely because sex and profanity are a crucial part of human existence. Hence, their protagonists are much more realistic than the boring, overdetermined archetypes from Devil and only as such are they able to convey relevant moral lessons applicable in everyday life. The muzzling of these films merely proves the outdated philosophy of Jack Valenti's obscurantist legions. Now, I know this rant to be futile, but then again, I won't miss an opportunity to point out how wacky the American rating system is and how maddening it is to see that the complaining power of American interest groups overwhelms even the most basic common sense.

Let me tell you a story that I find relevant in trying to explain my intrinsic opposition to the flawed morality of Devil. And believe me, this is no silly folktale. It's about my late grandfather, may he never be forgotten. He was a calm and generous man who never gave in to anger, instead accepting his ploy with resignation and philosophy, working hard to provide food and shelter for his seven children. My entire family loved him very dearly and we all share fond memories of him. Nobody loved the man more than we did. When I learned of his death, a sharp pain struck my heart like a dagger laced with venom and bitter tears rushed out my eyelids. Soon, there was a pool of salty sorrow inbetween my feet and I could barely formulate words without sobbing. I was vacationing in NYC at the time, and my grandfather had just died back in Joliette. I couldn't forgive myself for not being at his bedside when he passed on... and I never will forgive myself. There was so much I wanted to say to him, so many loving words with which I would've wanted to leave him... It was all a personal tragedy, and I still bear it like a scar on my heart. Needless to say, I cut my vacation short and bought the first ticket back home to Montreal. On my way to the bus station on 42nd street, I broke down in tears. I had to ride all the way from 128th to 42nd street sobbing, much to the disinterest of the crowd surrounding me. My pain was mine alone and although it was bathed in New York indifference, it felt very real and very immediate to me. Upon getting back to Montreal, I immediately got to working on some farewell words to say during the funerals. I wanted to insist on the memories that me and my cousins could share about my grandfather, making him out to be the pleasant, loving man that made all of our childhoods so bright and sunny. For me, the funeral was an occasion for my family to gather together in mourning and share the good memories we had about a great man because although he had vanished, he would still live in our hearts. This moment was meant for us, the living, imperfect people who felt pain and sorrow, people through which our patriarch could live forever. But then, during the eulogy, the despicable priest behind the pulpit, that lowly Catholic swindler who doesn't know the first thing about family comes in and tells us that our grandfather has "now joined his true family up in Heaven". What the fuck did he mean, "true family"? Weren't we, the people physically amassed in painful mourning his only true family? The priest could've spat in our faces and it wouldn't have been worse than the hateful crime he committed against all of us, living, breathing humans with the ability to feel love, pain, anger, sadness and despair, telling us we aren't true, but that the hazy concept of Heaven is! To this day, I still remember my grandfather vividly and I remember just as vividly the insult proffered by that priest on that day. The point of this story is to show just how religion tends to systematically dwarf humans emotions into nothingness by focusing on the overwhelming presence of sterile divinities. Which is precisely why Devil fails miserably in its bid to create affect. While I earlier deplored the lack of psychological finesse within the film, I now understand that it was never about psychology, nor was it about emotion, pain, sorrow, about, love, hate or guilt. Devil is not even about humanity. It is about divinity and its superiority to us. Devil is about omnipotent deities and human puppets with no choice but to follow, as sheep would. It pertains to the betterment of humanity only in its relationship with God. Thus, you will find that the film contains no actual dialogue between the characters as to what constitutes sin, and in what measure sin is punishable by death, and not by the justice system put in place by humans. Everything here is revealed through monologues, as if the characters were speaking not to their fellowmen, but to the Almighty Himself when they appraised the value of each others' lives. Hence, repentance and forgiveness herein exist only as absolute moral values, not as elements within a dialogue, which tends to sterilize any attempt at a true understanding of the very values foregrounded by the film. Gandhi once said "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", which is one of the great truths of this world. But to that, I would like to add: "eyeing only Heaven will make you blind to the whole world".

To conclude, I will not talk about Devil. I will simply cross the pond and marvel at a much more adult, more relevant film about repentance and forgiveness. That film is Andrea Arnold's Red Road (2006). Although prudes might argue otherwise, the two films are companion pieces. Both involve a killer who has killed in the same circumstances. Both involve a victim whose life is broken until bliss is found in forgiveness. Finally, both involve mystery and quiet observation within an investigative framework. But whereas the former film claims the omnipotence of absolute morality over sinful humans, the latter points out to the fragility, but overwhelming goodness of the human spirit. Although both films share the same basic message, one conveys it with the Medieval menace of fire and brimstone, while the other focuses on what's important, namely our lives on Earth, which we can all better if we stop and consider others for what they are, not for what they have done. If anything, Red Road is the perfect remedy to the poisonous Devil.

0,5/5 A self-defeating, narratively inept and terminally anachronistic moral fable that manages to insult both the viewer's intelligence and his dignity. If this is any indication of things to come, then you can already close the book on The Night Chronicles and Shyamalan's career.

Piranha (1978)

A scant three years after Jaws first reduced beach attendance throughout the world, this enjoyable rip-off came along. And when I say 'rip-off', I mean exactly that. Director Joe Dante actually made it explicit that the use of numerous small fishes instead of a single large one was merely an attempt to conceal the derivative nature of the film, which should come as no surprise considering that it is a Roger Corman production. Piranha's tagline tells the same story: "Then... you were shocked by the great white shark - Now... you are at the mercy of a 1000 jaws!" (emphasis added) Contrarily to Jaws though, the present film will unlikely make you reconsider that next dip in the river on account of its ludicrous premise. As you well know, piranhas live exclusively in South American waters. So the screenwriters were hard-pressed to find a suitable explanation right from the beginning, which is only one of the many challenges facing the production team and their minuscule budget. Being a staple of American horror, the botched military experiment was selected as justification for the appearance of the killer fishes. And although this convinces no one, it all makes for a very entertaining camp film highlighted by ruthless attacks on unsuspecting children and some hilarious turns by a patchwork of TV actors and cult figures (including British scream queen Barbara Steele and Corman regular Dick Miller).

An inch away from being fish food... Children in Dante's films

are often the most powerful catalysts of horror

The film begins conventionally enough with the demise of two youths out for a midnight dip beyond restricted lines. After crossing the fence surrounding an old military site, they both strip and jump into a fenced pool without even a thought about the piranhas swarming beneath the surface. Following their deaths, private investigator Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies from Sssssss (1973) and yes, The Sound of Music (1965) where she portrays one of the adorable von Trapp children) is sent to find out what happened. Upon reaching the small community of Lost River, she meets drunken hermit Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) who reluctantly accepts to take her up to the old military base. After the pair sneaks in and finds bloodied evidence of the two youths' visit, they figure that their bodies must not be far. Hence, Maggie singlehandedly decides to drain the pool located within the compound in order to search the bottom for remains. When a weird-looking man erupts into the room and aggressively tries to interrupt them, Paul and Maggie immediately make him out to be a madman and knock him out cold, oblivious as they are to his confused warnings. As you have probably figured out, the piranha pool drains right into the nearby river and thus, Maggie thus manages to infest the calm waters with killer fishes genetically enhanced for maximum ferocity. As it turns out, the man they knocked out was a respected geneticist who originally bred piranhas for the use by the army during the Cold War. When the man comes to, he steals Paul and Maggie's jeep in an attempt to quickly reach the town but crashes it instead, leaving the two protagonists with a severely injured man on their hands and no vehicle. After bringing the unconscious geneticist back to Paul's cabin, the pair eventually loads him unto an artisanal raft conceived by Paul and his daughter in order to reach the hospital located downriver. When the man recovers consciousness once more, he calmly explains that Maggie and Paul have cursed the river, filling it with the deadly fruits of his experiments. And so, the protagonists' raft ride becomes a dangerous race against the clock to reach the summer camp attended by Paul's daughter as well as to prevent the grand opening of the most recent tourist attraction of the area, the Lost River Lake Resort, despite the obvious reluctance of owner Buck Gardner (Dick Miller), all the while dodging the outstretched arms of the military and the local law enforcement.

Heather Menzies and Bradford Dillman form quite an unlikely duo,

which finds relevance only in its trying to solve the crisis they originated

(don't blink otherwise you might miss Menzies' breasts... or are they?)

The forced comparison with Alexandre Aja's 2010 version might not be favorable for this film in terms of special effects, set pieces or breast sizes, but it still remains a more efficient film. Its budget limitations actually help it steer clear of complacency and superficiality, making it a truly worthy effort in creative filmmaking. CGI effects were not the answer to everything back then and you actually had to work hard in order to convey the threat represented by monstrous beasts, and most of all, underwater beasts. Here, Dante uses quick editing both to conceal the rubbery texture of the props and to emulate the quick movements of the predators, creating some truly exhilarating, purely cinematographic events in the process. What was true for Psycho (1960) is thus also true for Piranha: the knife, or in this case the teeth, do not need to penetrate flesh in order to create exciting scenes of carnage and contribute a permeating sense of sensuality to the horrific events circumvented by the camera. Frenzied speed and quickly varying angles easily do the trick. As for the annoying presence of chattering noise on the soundtrack during the attacks, it contributes nothing in the way of realism but rather heightens the sense of aggression we derive from these attacks. This all goes to show that the apparent technical limitations of the film are actually opportunities to transcend a medium that often becomes victim to complacency. Thus, the frenzied editing, which was originally a mere setback of the film's minuscule budget eventually became its most precious asset and storytelling device. As we can see, creativity is born out of necessity. Which is the reason why we should still have B-movies made in Hollywood. Just think about it for a second: if instead of using hundreds of thousands of dollars to cast Paris Hilton or some other expandable starlet in a horror film, you would give that money to a hungry young filmmaker and demand he (or she) make a feature film for the following month, who knows what might happen, and what great new talent could thus reveal itself. Just look at what Corman did for Dante, and for many other filmmakers and film stars including Jonathan Demme, Jack Nicholson and Francis Ford Coppola.

These may well be mere plastic fishes, but they do so much

more than Aja's oversized, over-fearsome CGI piranhas

As many of Corman's productions, Piranha is deliciously irreverent, poking fun at the military complex, law enforcement and just about every form of authority who are all seen as incompetent, irresponsible and uncaring, with cops and soldiers bumbling about for our amusement, being knocked unconscious, deprived of their pants and even eaten alive. The film titillates us with the ever-present possibility of female nudity: in one early scene, the actress onscreen is so prompt in removing her clothing that we get a fair glimpse at her pubic hair; later, the leading lady flashes her breasts in a desperate attempt to distract a possibly-gay soldier; then, two lovely camp counselors are just about to remove their clothes before taking a swim when their grumpy boss shows up and spoils all our fun. This is all very exploitative, but in a joyous, smirk-inducing way. But even more surprising than the exploitation of nubile female flesh is the exploitation of kid flesh. Not in the pornographic sense, mind you, but in the horrific sense. That said, there is an extensive scene wherein a group of young campers is ruthlessly attacked by the piranhas. And contrarily to what generally happens in such instances, the killer fishes do take bites out of the children. And there are pools of blood forming around fetishistic close-ups of young flesh. I was less appalled by this than exhilarated. It's not often that you see children in danger and it creates much greater affect than adults in danger. Nobody wants to see children die, and this is precisely why this sequence is more effective than any other in the film. And it is also why the head-crushing scene is so important in The Toxic Avenger (1984). Because it establishes the killers to be arch-evil super-villains worthy of every horrible torture coming to them. Had it been a grown man whose head they would've crushed... it wouldn't have had half the impact. In Piranha, no child's head is likewise mutilated, but a similar kind of boundary-crossing is used to enhance affect. Thus, this is not exactly like Lloyd Kaufman's great, big "fuck you" to political correctness, more like a "suck my balls". After all, Corman was out there to make money, not purely visceral art trash. He was biting, sure, but he was also a ruthlessly efficient professional. The social critique within his films was neatly contained within conventional storytelling frameworks, rarely spilling beyond the incisively humorous dialogues or the grandiloquent characterization of certain villains. Here, the eco-friendly, anti-capitalist stance of the film is relegated mostly to instrumental, and often derivative plot devices. The central issue concerning mutated fishes is played mostly as a necessary way to justify the presence of piranhas in North American waters but obviously, the condemnation of genetic manipulation and the unbalancing of the ecosystem are not far behind. This rings especially true if you consider the early speech by bona fide character actor Keenan Wynn, who plays here aging hermit Jack. He basically tells Paul about how the river is a way of life, how it wakes you up and puts you to sleep with its gentle streaming, how it feeds you and gives you company. And that way of life is precisely what is at stake here, what is endangered by ruthless entrepreneurship, undesirable life forms thrown into the ecosystem and polluted waste coursing through underwater pipes (with which Paul eventually conquers the piranhas). This critique also expands to the irresponsible business venture of entrepreneur extraordinaire Buck Gardner, a man who will stop at nothing to sell his (terribly artificial) waterside paradise, the Lost River Lake Resort. By using Dick Miller's unique brand of expressionless expressivity, Dante fashions an hilarious icon of laisser-faire capitalism. Contradictorily, the man who will stop at nothing to please his clientele is willing to ignore all threat against it. And in the end, he is revealed as only one more powerful incompetent who takes important decisions for others while looking only inward for justification.

"There's more to life than booze", dixit the late Keenan Wynn,

"there's also pure water"

As I mentioned earlier, this here is a typical Corman production as it was the launching pad of a future mammoth of genre filmmaking. Despite such films as The Howling (1981), Gremlins (1984), Innerspace (1987), Matinee (1993) and the great, if somewhat underrated Small Soldiers (1998) at his credit, Joe Dante seems to have always chased after the memory of Piranha, which is precisely the kind of films he celebrated throughout his entire career. The low-budget, exploitative genre thriller made with tender, loving care and childish good humor, as exalted in his first film, Hollywood Boulevard (1976) as well as in Matinee and Trapped Ashes (2006), constitutes the epitome of filmmaking as suggested by his body of work. And although most of his films contain exacerbated versions of the main themes from Piranha, namely the mix of horror and humor, an overwhelming concern for children and the power of their imagination as well as a marked disdain for blind corporate advancement, none share the purity of his original genre film. With this film more than with any other he ever directed, he narrows in on the cheap but spectacular cinema of William Castle, whom was both an inspiration for Dante and Roger Corman.

In the end, Piranha is a cheap film. Cheap and effective, with little concessions made to plausibility. The dialogue is savory and the pace is fast. There are cars burning rubber in fast-motion, exploding jeeps and plenty of blood pools and plastic teeth. Plus, there's Barbara Steele and Dick Miller. For 600,000 clams, 40 times less than the new version cost, I'd buy that in a second, especially if you consider the talent at work here: other from Dante, you've got John Sayles (Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Lone Star (1996)), Mark Goldblatt (Oscar-nominated editor of T2 (1991) and Saturn Award co-winner (with Joe Dante) for the present film) and Phil Tippett (Oscar-winning visual artist of Jurassic Park (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997)) amongst others. This is a typical Corman-produced quickie, using creative filmmaking in order to conceal budget limitations, managing to build a cult following as well as the accolades of critics.

3/5 Intentionally funny, with truly well-crafted piranha attack scenes, this smart exploitation quickie manages to greatly transcend its budget.

Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (2009)

Imprisoned green activist: "Please, I'm a friend of nature!!"

Axe-wielding whale hunter: "Tell it to the axe."

Decapitation.

Awesome.

From where I first stood, parked in front of the "New Releases" section of the video store, looking for a fifth title to complete my harvest of the day (and benefit from the advantageous rate awarded to "film-vores"), Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre or Harpoon as I saw it packaged, with its picture of a large harpoon piercing through the body of four people on a bright red background, hardly seemed tempting. If it hadn't been for a rave review I had read in the previous days, I would've just laughed and picked Vous n'aimez pas la vérité instead (which I should've done then, but will do next week instead). The way I figured, titles like Harpoon are meant only to ornate video store shelves for a few weeks then return to the void from where they came. Honestly, I was so convinced by the awful cover art that the film was a straight-to-video American release that I would've betted on it. But in reality, the film is something else entirely. Well, it is and it isn't at the same time, because although it first manages to draw you right into its net (with gritty images, an intimate camera and an intriguing political agenda), your interest will eventually dwindle as it starts falling into all the traps cursing survivalist horror (devaluation of all characters, sudden shrinking of narrative possibilities and multiplication of silly plot twists, all for the purpose of fore-fronting a massacre that thus loses all of its relevance). Like the overconfident captain at the helm of a mighty ship, director Kemp has failed to see the sharp rocks protruding from the shallow waters right in front of him. He thus sails proudly at first, relying on his smarts and the awesome premise of his film, but is eventually overwhelmed by something he should've foreseen. The shining hull of his embarkation thus becomes twisted and torn, regurgitating the contents of its bowels out to sea. The final few shots of the film are great, but they can't salvage the sinking ship.

Since the film was marketed in North America as Harpoon: Whale Watching Massacre, I had no idea about its Icelandic roots. Even if I had bothered to look at the cast list, I wouldn't have found out since there are actors from all around the globe here: there's a Finnish girl playing a German girl, a Japanese dubber from Brazil, a Londonese Arab playing an Algerian, a former Miss Iceland playing an American... and Gunnar Hansen, the prodigal son from Reykjavik, ready for an all-new massacre. It's really an incredible melting pot here, and you have to wonder why the makers of this film felt they needed such a mix-up of nationalities. But the crazy thing is that the eclectic cast largely contrived to unnatural roles outside of their personal linguistic proficiencies (I'm thinking mostly about Aymen Hamdouchi's painful rendition of the French language) actually manages to do a decent job, the main reason being that they each have little screen-time and limited interactions with the other actors. The film's problems lie elsewhere, first of all in the North-American packaging. I mean, why remove Reykjavik from the title and put Harpoon instead? I'm guessing the distributors wanted to conceal the Icelandic origin of the film... but why? The film is shot in English. The title is in English. It even involves a clever wordplay referencing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre which is completely lost in the process of inserting Harpoon. But most of all, the film has a political agenda pertaining specifically to Iceland's position within the "ethical" debate surrounding whale-hunting, an agenda whose entire purpose is thus slashed right out of sight. Contrarily to what people may believe, this film is just as culturally specific as most horror films, including the Australian effort Wolf Creek (2005), another film wrongly tagged as a parent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) with which it shares only superficial aspects. By reducing the title only to Harpoon and thus shifting the focus away from the location of the action, which is crucial, toward its most impressive device of violence, which is incidental, the distributors are demeaning the entire horror genre and its power to transcend linguistic and geographical boundaries in order to deliver a heartfelt message to the world. They even become guilty of somewhat of a colonialist crime: cultural non-differentiation, which tends to defuse the central message of the work concerned, effectively forcing it to silence. The entire enterprise is thus pacified and assimilated into the smooth, unified façade of the horror section shelves. But if ever there was a genre that needed to make cultural distinctions obvious, it is precisely the horror genre. Horror is revelatory, it is visceral, and it pertains very specifically to the culture from which it comes. It lets you know exactly what people are feeling at any moment in time, showing you their fears, their frustrations and everything else that makes their heart beat. The rationale wherein you need to hide the foreign origin of any cultural product in order to better sell it only reinforces the philosophy of cultural assimilation. Moreover, it prevents any attempt to make the necessary steps toward the recognition of difference. Frankly, the melting pot is quite an inhumane concept when considering the irresistible (economic) power of the dominant culture responsible of the pot. The idea that the proximity of different cultures will eventually make them all melt into one unified entity will always amount to assimilation under the watchful eye of commerce and this is precisely what seems to be happening here. The truth is we should exalt difference instead of melting it: we should not force others to do things our way, but rather learn the way of others in order to better know them, and eventually accept them as they are. Humans should learn to bond through their common plight as humans, not as the undifferentiated parts of one global cultural entity or the antagonistic members of clashing cultures. In the film presently under analysis, we should try to understand what makes the killers tick. We should try and pinpoint their place within the culture from where they originated as well as the reason for their madness. Which is what we will try to do here, in an effort to give world cinema of any kind its right to difference.

Humans have replaced whales in Icelandic waters

As the title suggests, the film chronicles the ordeal of some tourists participating in a whale-watching excursion in Reykjavik. It opens in a bar where protagonist Annette and her airhead friend are spending the night prior to their excursion out to sea, an excursion in which Annette has only reluctantly agreed to embark. After meeting a suave stranger who buys them beer and proposes to introduce them to the house band, the two girls eventually split up. While Annette responsibly decides to get back to the hotel, her friend is rather dragged away by the suave stranger toward a shady looking apartment by the pier. At this point, we assume that the two friends have implicitly agreed to meet aboard the tour boat the following day. We then cut to the harbor at midday, where a flock of clueless tourists is gathering prior to the whale-watching expedition. We are first introduced to a trio of smutty Japanese bourgeois, a trio of bitter old feminists from the old countries, a charismatic black guy, a blonde bimbo, and a drunken, sharply-dressed Algerian (at least, that's what he appears to be trying to be). And although they thus amass, there is still no boat in sight. When said boat finally appears, with no other than Gunnar Hansen at the helm, we still haven't seen Annette approaching. The poor girl is still sleeping back at the hotel, blissfully unaware of her lateness. When brutally woken up by the housemaid, she rushes outside and sprints to the boat where she witnesses its departure. Hellbent on joining her friend, she leaps aboard, wounding her knee in the process but drawing applauses from the surrounding crowd. She has done it! The only problem is that her friend is nowhere in sight. On top of that, she now has a bleeding knee and this gives the pervy mate a golden opportunity to creep up on her and lovingly tend to her wounds. He takes this opportunity to propose an innocent trip down to the cabin where he then proceeds to rape her. But he won't have time to get to the panties as the captain of the ship is severely wounded in a freak accident caused by the drunken Algerian. Called on deck by the blonde bimbo, who manages only a cold stare toward half-naked, crying Annette, the mate rushes up. Seeing his captain dying, he flees aboard the rescue boat, leaving the tourists to fend for themselves. Unable to maneuver the ship, the eclectic group seems doomed to wave-rocking boredom. That is, until they are approached by a speedy dragger who's pilot proposes to "save" them in so many words. When the dragger approaches a rusty whaler and the tourists are taken on-board, much to the annoyance of the charismatic black leader, the slaughter begins. And it begins right away, with no less than a hammer to the face of one of the feminists. The family of hunters gathered for the massacre are but three: the authoritative old mother and her two sons: the demented, twitchy dwarf and the broad-shouldered, cutex-wearing strongman. They don't even look so tough, kind of nice actually. But the hammer to the face is too much for the hysteric tourists who chaotically disperse, smashing the main narrative to bits in an instant. The rest of the film is a formulaic cat-and-mouse game between the bad guys and good guys, the gritty realism coming in brutal contact with the need for a formulaic spectacle.

The film distinguishes itself very early on by boasting some of the best, most beautiful and relevant credits ever to grace a survivalist horror film. These credits are achieved by grafting together excerpts from old Icelandic whale-hunting films. As I watched the gorgeous Northern seas rippling with sun-streaked waves while swaying along with bearded fishermen on the wet bridge of a dragger, I was struck with sudden and utterly powerful nostalgia. Shivers ran through my spine as I felt the biting breeze prickle my flesh while the carelessness of olden days seem to lighten the burden weighting on my shoulders. The gritty immediacy of the images before my eyes reminded me of John Grierson's films and I thus felt a strong connection to the whale-hunters whose lives I thus had the privilege to share for a spell. My entire sympathy was instantly channeled toward these tough, toiling men from an era forever crystalized in history because I suddenly stood amongst them, enthralled as I was by the surprisingly gripping images in front of me. Of course, I was expecting the celluloid to tear at any moment and aggressive heavy metal to come blasting through my speakers, thus ruining my fun. But this thankfully never happened. Instead, I was treated to a spectacle far more impressive than any of the slaughter scenes contained post-credits. I saw whales dying at the hands of men. I saw their huge carcasses hauled to the pier, then sliced into thin strips using an instrument of rare sharpness. It was incredible: the flesh was peeling away like the skin of an orange. This was a sight I had never, ever seen, nor something I would have ever expected to see in a B-series exploitation film. What the credits did, at least for me, was to celebrate the olden days of whale-fishing, during which men were not mere men, but the rightful descendants of Viking heroes. They made whale-fishing to be something convivial and wholly natural. After all, hunting is natural. Only the fishing industry isn't. And that's what should be fixed. By implementing all-reaching legislation to ban whale-hunting, the green powers that be may well save a species from extinction, but they have also caused the extinction of another species, that of whale-hunters. And this is the main point that the film tries to get across, starting with the credits, whose purpose is to explain the nostalgia of the demented whale-hunters remembering a golden age during which they didn't have to hunt humans for meat and didn't have to carve wooden whales for uncaring tourists to try and earn a living. As I mentioned during my rant against cultural non-differentiation, all appraisal of horror films should be based on the analysis of the killer's nature, not on the analysis of the killer's violence. Here, the symbolism is explicit: we have a family of professional whale-hunters whose trade was dismantled by the pressures from "Green Piss" and other like-minded groups who failed to consider the full ramifications of their actions on local populations... of humans. We have a family who's patriarch is deceased (symbolizing the death of the old guard and the disorientation of the younger generation). Their sharp knives only allow them to scrape a living by carving wooden whales. Still, old habits die hard and the family's proficiency still lies squarely in hunting. So naturally they end up hunting what has replaced whales in the surrounding seas: whale watchers. One so bold could say that this illustrates a very natural form of evolution: one species replacing another within the hunting grounds of a predator is bound to become a foe to be killed. In effect, ecologists have thus completely unbalanced the Icelandic ecosystem in a bid to save it. By failing to acknowledge the predatory nature of humans, they have turned their own fellowmen into preys. This central irony is the greatest asset of Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre but sadly it is eventually drowned by the narrow needs of survivalist horror's rigid framework wherein one-liners are often equated with revelatory monologues and plot twists are likened to elaborate set-ups. Because when the massacre begins, we enter the very familiar territory of systematic stalk-and-slash and the protagonists lose their interest by becoming nothing but preys. As for the villains, they thus cannot escape the burden of overdetermination. Murderous families of cannibals like this one instantly become universal when depicted only through violence, onomatopoeias and non-sensical ramblings even though their "crimes" are specific to their condition. And just like that, every effort made toward characterization is rendered useless. With one fell swoop of the hammer, the film implodes and leaves us scratching our heads up until the very final shot.

An anchor into blood-splattered nostalgia

There's a reason why I described the opening credits at great length in the previous paragraph and this reason is quite simple: these opening credits are the best part of the film. I'm not saying the film is entirely bad, I'm just saying that the credits greatly overwhelmed the following hour and a half of film. And although I knew this would be the case right off the bat, I was nonetheless happy with Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre's gritty look and competent use of the hand-held camera to brush a realistic, intimate portrait of the characters and locations. By framing faces in uneasy proximity and thus capturing even their nastier features, the filmmakers earned points for honesty and thus made their characters to be entirely believable (despite some linguistic limitations). This immediately makes the two "German" "heroines" fleshier and more sympathetic than your usual perfect bimbos. It also makes the bar wherein the action starts to be depicted in an unusually sensual fashion that draws you right inside. Annette and her friend are nicely fleshed-out and their surroundings are vibrant. The only problem with the introductory scene is the apparent accumulation of clichés. Seeing how they ended up in a noisy bar abroad and how they don't seem to know a word of Icelandic, the two girls immediately appear to be the same dopey partyers which have plagued the genre for the most part of the last three decades, popping up as sacrificial lambs in other recent "touristic" horror films such as Hostel (2005), Turistas (2006), Donkey Punch (2008), finding their ultimate incarnation in The Human Centipede (2009). Then there's the dreadfully dated apparition of a suave stranger trying to befriend the girls, buying them beer and such. You will roll your eyes a lot at this point, thinking you've fallen prey to lowest common denominator horror. But the makers of this film are actually much smarter than this. In actuality, every apparent cliché is but a way to trick you by using genre formulas to better subvert them as the plot unfolds. Hence, the three characters introduced in the opening scene are revealed to be of a completely different nature than what we first thought. This is incredibly savvy stuff here. And the film remains just as smart up until a very specific point in the narrative: the point where the entire cast of characters disbands, transforming each individual into nothing more than an overdetermined victim to be summarily executed. In effect, they become nothing more than hunted-down whales, but without the majesty thereof. Obviously, you can argue that this is precisely the role they are given within the story, which is the case, but the net result in narrative terms is a fragmentation of the plot into a bunch of little, insignificant plot fragments. Each victim tries to save his own skin while carefully avoiding all others. Again, you could say that this attitude tells a lot about the selfishness of humanity. But you must also acknowledge the fact that this makes for really poor, really broken plot development. In the end, as the wit dries up and the subversions of the genre become more scarce and less biting (I'm thinking here about the central revelation concerning Leon), you end up focusing solely on the only really dramatic, poignant issue in the film, the martyrdom of Annette.

Poor Annette is one of the unluckiest of all horror film protagonists. I mean it. Her ordeal begins right off the bat as she is abandoned by her friend, who prefers the company of some dopey guy she has just met. And despite the fact that Annette insists that they must go to bed early for an expedition she hasn't even planned, her friend still sleeps in and ditches her. When she is woken up by the housemaid the following morning, Annette wraps a blanket around her naked body and erupts into the corridor, drawing the lascivious look of a passer-by. This might seem like an insignificant event at first, but it actually becomes an important leitmotiv as more and more perverts start ogling the fake-German beauty, further hurting and degrading her. After being nearly raped by the mate aboard the whale-watching ship, she is specifically targeted by the equally perverted, twitchy younger boy of the whale-hunting family who seems to wish her his bride. Upon catching her, the frankly annoying, dwarfish fellow immediately proceeds to use her in a weirdly religious rite involving the spreading of a thick, greasy substance akin to blood over her half-naked body. All through the plot, the poor girl is also mistreated by the other good guys: first by the blond bimbo who thinks her a bitch, turning her back when Annette outstretches her hand for help following the near-rape, then by a surprise caller who manages to reach her cell phone but categorically refuses to believe her story and hangs up. In the end, things get even shittier... Contrarily to what we were led to believe early on, Annette is not a heroine, but a sacrificial victim. It would seem that the focus put on her early on as well as the prodigious leap she makes to reach the whale-watching ship gives her a hero status de facto, granting her some immunity against impeding doom. But it does not. And it is in this subversion of the heroic persona that we find the dramatic crux of the film. Since the film is mostly devoid of both dramatic power and sympathetic victims, the tragic nature of Annette's character, which is constantly trapped by events beyond her will, is crucial to the film. It allows for (barely) sufficient dramatic intensity to propel the film up until the final frame and leave the viewer affected, and thus willing to reflect more deeply on the ensemble after the credits start rolling.

Poor Annette is the object of many perverted gazes

All in all, Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre is a good, smart film that lacks the technical innovation to transcend the boring formula which fuels the most part of the narrative. It does an impressive job of setting up the story, but it goes nowhere from there but where you'd expect it to go only by looking at the cover art. It's a real shame because it showed a lot of potential going in. As for culturally-specific elements, they can only go so far to distinguish a film that has so willfully chosen the beaten paths of survivalist horror. Thankfully, we got Annette to carry us through to a surprisingly affective ending.

2,5/5 A smartly ironic, involving film that falls flat on its face when giving in to the ridiculous formula of survivalist horror

Piranha (2010)

First off, let me tell you this about Alexandre Aja's Piranha: seeing it in 2D isn't really seeing it. The piranhas are much less lively, the puke and buckshot thrown in your face lack relevance and the naked underwater ballet loses much of its impact on account of the flattening of curves. The truth is that the arduous transition back to the original two dimensions of filmmaking is a necessary blowback to the successful use of the 3D technology during shooting. And it is the burden of all films shot in 3D since these films contain many artificially textured elements while also using a seemingly expended depth of field to create effects that tend to lose all meaning once our depth perception comes back to normal. For example, a shot containing only one piranha swimming in the forefront of the frame can be impressive when you see it in 3D because the creature will appear to graze you, but the same shot is relatively boring and useless when seen in plain 2D, given the distance that now separates you from the mosnter. The same is true for all shots containing elements thrown from the background to the foreground of the frame such as puke regurgitated overboard, a shotgun shell splitting into pellets, a beer glass thrown at a Pixies shirt or a severed penis burped out by a piranha, all elements which come to lose their apparent velocity in space and sudden proximity to the viewer once in 2D, failing to truly involve you and thus losing their shock value. All these things are still fun to watch, but the experience thereof is much lessened by the transition and I'm sure you will automatically make a comparison unfavorable to the DVD if you've seen both versions. Personally, I congratulate myself for having bought a ticket while the 3D version was still in theaters. It is that version, and that version only which I continue to cherish in my mind. Unfortunately for those who haven't had the chance to buy a ticket like I did, I'm sorry to have to tell you that you've missed your chance to see a surprisingly great horror film in the way it makes sense. To further put salt on the wound, I will admit that the film's use of the third dimension is the best I've ever seen, especially considering the naked underwater ballet, which turns out to be surprisingly underwhelming in the 2D version as the streaks of light now fail to highlight the lovely curves of the two babes wearing only flippers and their divinely graceful movement in space loses its fluidity. Let this be a lesson to all: if there's a 3D film that you really want to see, pay the price instead of complaining for this might be your only chance to really appreciate it.

If this baby grazed you, you'd be shitting your pants

The story of Piranha is set in Lake Victoria (located in Southern USA), where one species of fish is discovered that will have equally devastating effects on the world as the Nile Perch. The main plot focuses on the Forester family (single mom Julie, teenager Jake and the two kids, Laura and Zane) who must all deal in their own ways with a ruthless attack by prehistoric piranhas unearthed from an underground lake when Richard Dreyfuss dropped a beer bottle to the bottom of a crevasse dedicated to Mesolithic digging. Now this wouldn't be so bad, a massive flock of flesh-eating fishes invading the lake, except that when it does is smack in the middle of spring break during which another invasion takes place, that of city jocks coming down to party by the beach. Right after Dreyfuss is munched to death, using the last of his strength to raise a mangled hand above the water (and showcase the great quality of the special effects), we are quickly, but efficiently introduced to all the important characters. Julie (Elisabeth Shue) is the though town sheriff enforcing the law with an iron fist in a velvet glove. When we first meet her, she is writing a ticket to a party dude who destroyed a post with his car. As the dude complains, like a whiny bitch I must add, she suggests that he just take the ticket, else she might take out the breathalyzer and have him jailed. And that's as far as her sense of humor goes for when the dude starts getting a bit too friendly, she grabs him in a nice hammerlock and whips out a nasty-looking taser to discourage any reckless bystander from getting involved in the arrest. Meanwhile, all the way across town, her son Jake (Steven R. McQueen, grandson of you know who and stepson of hockey hall of famer Luc Robitaille (!)) fails to show the same bravery and self-confidence when he randomly meets love interest Kelly (Jessica Szohr) while on his way to pick up his sister. After a very short, jittery exchange during which we take a definite clue as to their puppy love, Jake loses Kelly to a bunch of silly-looking surfer types in a silly-looking dune buggy who also throw a glass full of beer at his shirt. Luckily for Jake, things quickly take a turn for the best as he finds his sister Laura (Brooklynn Proulx) chatting with attractive British "wild girl" Danni (shapely Kelly Brook) who happens to be waiting for coked-up "girls gone wild" film director Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell). When the guy shows up, he instantly summarizes all of the flamboyant overacting techniques that will come to characterize him throughout the film (super-speedy flow, manic jitter, ample gestures and carefully choreographed warmth). And conveniently enough, this Derrick character is in desperate need of a "local" to show him and his girls the way around the lake for a shoot scheduled for the following day, selecting bystander Jake as "his man" for the job. The young man takes but a glance at Danni's warm smile and becomes wholeheartedly convinced to come along, as any guy would be. Given this divine opportunity, Jake thus finds a way to evade his babysitting duties by bribing his younger brother and sister, then elopes to Derrick's boat on the following day, where he eventually becomes stranded with a token cameraman, love interest Kelly, two bombshells (Brook + porn star Riley Steele) and the increasingly aggressive Derrick. During this time, his mom is busy trying to solve the mystery of the prehistoric piranhas while young Paula and Zane find a way to get trapped on an island separated from land by a thin, piranha-filled strip of water. When the family comes together again, it will be in dire circumstances. Oh yeah, and there's also a bunch of partying teenagers near the beach. Anybody said "fish food"?

The increased budget of this remake allows for far

superior depictions of fish food

Yes, you read that correctly: the film showcases a huge underground lake containing lively prehistoric piranhas which are awakened by one of Richard Dreyfuss' beer bottles. Well, it isn't Richard Dreyfuss per se but an expandable character he portrays, the first victim, but also the first wink flashed at us by the production team. Actually both his cameo and the premise involving an earth-shattering beer bottle are winks directed squarely at film critics who have had their fill of dead-serious horror films that forgot how to be fun. This film however, is pure camp, but it is willfully assumed camp. And there's no better way to sell you a narrative wherein beach bunnies are attacked by piranhas. By realizing this simple fact, the production team demonstrates a rare virtue amongst contemporary genre filmmakers from Hollywood, self-awareness. This is a cardinal virtue for any horror filmmaker working in the present era of mindless plagiarism (read "endless multiplication of remakes and sequels") and here, it fuels the film more than adequately for its 200 mph race to the finish (which is a great, campy cliffhanger, one even superior to that in Joe Dante's version). Seeing how their basic idea was ludicrously far-fectched, Aja and crew decided to go all out and craft a completely over-the-top film, allowing their ludicrous working material to make perfect sense while completely fulfilling its viewers in the process. The showmanship necessary to sell you beach-busting piranhas thus finds its reflection in the showmanship demonstrated across the board and which materializes in the top-notch casting and rare sense of spectacle deriving from the ample showcasing of nudity and gore.

Aside from Dreyfuss, one of the survivor of Jaws (1975), whom is killed in the very first scene (thus establishing the Piranhas' superiority to the outdated great white shark), the film contains many other savvy casting choices. As far as overacting goes, there are lots of specialists here, most notably the always reliable fan favorite Christopher Lloyd who gives the old "Doc Brown" routine a new life and the manic Eli Roth, armed here with two super-soakers to squirt water at girls' tits while enumerating an impressive array of synonyms for breasts. Roth's character, the host of a wet t-shirt competition set on a huge raft filled with girls, along with Jerry O'Connell's Derrick Jones are both shockingly exacerbated machos who get more than their rightful retribution for disrespecting women once the action starts. These two despicable, unsympathetic individuals make for very enjoyable kills and this is due in great part to the quality of their characterization. Actually, every character here is cast with great flair. Elisabeth Shue, who still looks fine in a beige deputy uniform, makes for an empathic heroine while Ving Rhames is, as usual, the perfect bad-ass. Kelly Brook (FHM's sexiest woman of 2005, if such references can enlighten you) is obviously ideal casting as the sympathetic wild girl, especially since she agreed to shed all of her clothes for the film. As for the remaining cast, you will note that Jessica Szohr plays here what is essentially a version of Vanessa from Gossip Girls, allowing the young actress to remain in a certain comfort zone while providing the necessary amount of puke to earn her rightful place in the film. As for Steven McQueen, well, he is Steve McQueen's grandson! What more do you want? Casting-wise, the only problem for me was the untimely death of Dina Meyer's character. Maybe it's just the trivial fact that I saw Starship Troopers on the night I first saw Piranha, but damn, I hate to see the girl die! She's great! Why does she have to suffer so unjustly (1) all the time? Here, she is part of a scientific team meant to explore the underwater lake opened by the accidental rift from the first scene. This team is decimated in a matter of minutes, but not without first allowing us a trip down to an impressive underwater cave filled with bunches of translucent red globes containing the living embryos of piranhas. Eventually, Dina's death is narratively relevant for there's a piranha still munching on her flesh when her mangled body is hauled onboard by the protagonists, a piranha that will remain the protagonists' captive until it is dropped into one of the large tanks in Christopher Lloyd's impressive aquarium. Thus, poor Dina is nothing more than piranha bait. And that's a real shame...

Piranha boasts one of the most spectacular cast ever assembled

Since Piranha is a loud celebration of genre film as spectacle, the brilliant casting extends also t0 the attractive extras filling the background with their ample curves and hard muscles. Their flesh bears the double function of enticing viewers with its youthful perfection while also disgusting them with its eventual massacre. These extras are an integrant part of the film's efficiency deriving from its careful observance of the simple mathematics central to American horror. The main operation is obvious: you take a generic, immediately intelligible narrative framework, then add gore and nudity to the mix. Here, it is achieved through the successful mix of the conventional family drama with girls gone wild and over-the-top gore, all three elements brought to their wildest extremities. Hence, we get to see nice-looking, half-naked youths in bathing suits, but we also get to marvel at full frontal female nudity (which is a nice change of pace from Hollywood's recent obsession with revealing penises), Dantesque depictions of suffering and one dramatic tableau that's sure to bring families together: a mother and her two small children, all dangling on a wire above a rock-spiked, piranha-filled lake shore. Everything here is exacerbated just the way it should be. You can thus appreciate the fact that most girls who die don't do so until they have shown their breasts. Two cases in point: the topless gliding girl, whom we get to see from every possible angle before she is half-eaten upon touching the infested waters and the sawed-off girl whom is cut lengthwise by a flying wire to have her top fall off first , and then, her body split in two. Exacerbated also are the character types. In diametral opposition within the narrative are the wholesome, naive townsfolk from Spielbergian films and the obnoxious, uncaring outsiders who pollute the lake with garbage without the slightest afterthought. Smack in the middle of these opposite character types is gorgeous Danni, the sympathetic wild girl, who is first blessed with unforeseen refinement precisely because of her belonging to both groups but then revealed to be merely instrumental to the plot. All this polarization might seem almost Manichean, but it works superbly here. You see, the bimbos and buff dudes gathered together on the beach to listen to annoying dance music and bask in their awesomeness are exactly what they have made themselves to be, namely meat jiggling about for the first predator around to bite into. Now, whereas the original Piranhas attacked mostly sympathetic characters, most notably young campers (including the protagonist's daughter), this new version shows almost only rich, obnoxious teenagers biting the big one. The focus thus shifts away from terror toward pure spectacle. The attacks on humans are not meant to create affect anymore, they're now merely a celebration of death and mayhem. The truth is, such humans can't possibly create affect. They're merely objects for the look and by the time they get shredded to bits, they have outlived their usefulness. We have taken a good look at their half-naked beach bodies and so their raison d'être has vanished into oblivion. All of this mostly liberates the viewer from moral concerns and lets him enjoy the superior special effects fully. With its exploding heads, maelstroms of fangs, legs eaten to the bone, bodies ripping in half, faces ripped-off, piranhas bursting through half-eaten heads and mangled penises, the film revels in excess, enhancing the specularity of the original and eventually inscribing Aja's name in neon letters within this, the culture of excess, wherein five pounds is not heavy enough for a breast and where a bucket of blood demands another. This is all achieved first and foremost because the makers of this film were thoroughly conscious of what they were doing and how they should proceed to do it. This is not rocket science we're talking about here but rather spectacle, pure spectacle, without any emotional involvement that could disrupt our eager anticipation of blood and flesh.

Unlike Aja's remake of The Hills Have Eyes (1977), this new offering is a re-working of the original from the ground up. You might actually say that it is an entirely original film, sharing with the Roger Corman production only the basic idea of piranhas attacking bathing hotties. The premise is not at all the same, the characters are completely different, the narrative is stand-alone and the piranha attacks are handled in a much more contemporary, more spectacular way. It is only if you look really, really close that you will see small, cosmetic similarities between the two versions. So unlike my review for Aja's The Hills Have Eyes, this one here will not simply direct you to the previous version. Far from it. I am actually very enthusiastic about the film, ever since I walked out of the empty theater where I first saw it, my heart full with content memories of the erotically entwined bodies of Kelly Brook and Riley Steele. To me, all remakes should be done like Piranha was, by using the basic idea but injecting a more contemporary narrative around it and enhancing the wow factor. After all, you have to remember that classics never die and that their ghosts will forever haunt those who try to rip them off. And thus every remake, and every literary adaptation for that matter, will automatically force comparison with the source material, usually pushing viewers to concede superiority to whatever came first. There are not many exceptions to this. David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly (1986) immediately comes to mind, but then you start scratching your head trying to think of more. And although the new Piranha isn't head and shoulders above the original, I would grant it a slight edge considering the sheer scope of the spectacle contained within. Thankfully, the superior budget is invested directly in fan service. The viewer literally finds himself amidst a sea of breasts, many of which are fully revealed by a lustful camera managing one of the most impressive, and unlikely exploit ever caught on film: capturing the erotic ballet performed underwater by two stunning beauties wearing only flippers. Then, there are the magnified sets wherein the magnified piranha attacks take place. Both the sets and the depiction of mangled bodies are incredibly elaborate, making for one truly epic scene of carnage taking place near the beach where the partying teenagers have amassed in a large fleet of boats and rubber trips. The state-of-the-art CGI effects allow the creation of truly effective, surprisingly lifelike piranha attacks, which the sound now nicely complements (unlike in the original film). And although the climactic finale is slightly derivative of the original, it is far superior in terms of excitement. The tension is palpable now as Jake throws himself in the water to save Kelly trapped in a sinking boat. Seeing how the piranhas can rip entire people to shreds in a matter of instants, every second passed underwater adds to the excruciatingly unnerving experience we share with the two young people. As for the propane gas explosion they narrowly avoid, this is pure A action film stuff. What's even more impressive than all these exhilarating action bits is that the film even manages to add some neat technical novelties in order to better frame them, such as the half-submerged frame wherein you see both the panicking protagonists in the upper half and the incoming piranhas in the lower half. This creates unfathomable tension while keeping everything within a single frame, thus illustrating just how efficient and generous with scares the filmmaking here truly is.

The increased budget allows the creation of epic scenes of carnage

With this film, Aja and crew give us a lesson in genre filmmaking for the dawning decade. They don't waste time coming up with a plausible premise, simply using a spectacular one instead and buttering it with many layers of campy characters and dialogues. And if the campiness of the film is a crucial indicator of its efficiency, it is precisely because the evolution of the genre pertains only to the cultivation of excess and the subsequent excision of morality. Hence, Piranha is to horror films what Crank (2006) was to action films. Both films are self-conscious exercises in genre purification and the glorification of mindless but sensually effective filmmaking. Both use ludicrously far-fetched premises to anchor the narrative in a logic-defying world of fantastic excitement. Both have fully embraced their purely entertaining nature, not merely grazed it with the tip of their fingers. Both understand what they are and use this knowledge in order to transcend the shackles of realism and plausibility which are dragging down fine series of pulp fantasy such as the Batman and James Bond series straight into the pit of self-satisfied overwriting and toward the realm of unfathomable and excruciating boredom. Concerning the new Nolan-directed Batman and its recent announcing of Anne Hathaway as the umpteenth iteration of Catwoman, I will say this: although there's little that sounds more appealing to me than the idea of Hathaway in any sort of cat-inspired attire, I will definitely not suffer 2+ hours of smutty, boring material just to get a few glimpses at her. I would rather rent Love and Other Drugs (2010) instead, which should tell you a lot about what I think of the current trend of gritty reboots. As for Aja's Piranha, it is for me a beacon of hope in an otherwise dark and dreary world that lets me believe in the liveliness of fantasy in cinema and the ability of Haute Tension's director to transcend the rigid framework he has had to work with since Hollywood absorbed him.

3/5 A truly spectacular, stand-alone remake.

(1) [contains spoilers] In the Saw series, poor Dina is strapped in a cruelly inescapable trap that she manages to solve only to die in the following moments. Even worst is how she is sacrificed in Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. Despite being one of the two leads, her character is killed immediately after having sex with Casper Van Dien's Rico, being effectively removed from the narrative in order to eliminate any moral dilemma pertaining to Rico courtship of Denise Richards' Carmen. And when I say 'sex', I mean a 20-minutes quickie in a tent on a hostile planet full of giant bugs. Never, ever was I so pissed off by the death of a character, especially since she dies of a real cheap shot from behind. And now I've got to see her getting shred to bits by piranhas? Hell no! Honestly, I'm now one step away from creating the "Stop killing Dina Meyer" foundation...