There hasn’t been much good news surrounding Piranha 3DD so far. From the very beginning, the fact that Alexander Aja and his writers weren’t coming back for this sequel to their delightfully nihilist 2010 film was a disappointment. Then the studio started monkeying with the release date, a sure sign that signals were crossed and expectations weren’t being met at some level of the production. It got to the point where it was pretty easy to write Piranha 3DD off as a missed opportunity before anyone had ever even seen it.
But this new trailer that Shock Till You Drop has dug up throws a monkey wrench in those plans. How could anyone hate a movie with a cast like this? First off, Christopher Lloyd returns as the crazy scientist, which is something that should happen in about every third movie made. Secondly, David Koechner is playing the owner of a water park who has hired strippers for life guards. Thirdly, they’ve included David Hasselhoff, who shows up playing himself, but while dressed in his Baywatch gear. Then you also have to consider the fact that Katrina Bowden seems to have a baby piranha in her vagina, the only thing that can stop these fish may be Gary Busey biting their heads off, and eventually things get so bad that Ving Rhames has to go all Planet Terror and pull out a set of gun legs.
Yeah, Aja and company rode that fine line between being exploitative and not being too self-aware perfectly, and it’s unlikely this new crew is going to be able to hit the same mark and make something quite as good. But it’s pretty hard to watch a horror movie make a loving homage to A Nightmare on Elm Street and not root for it. It’s pretty hard to see a sequel be this dedicated to having more boobs than the original and not stand up and applaud. So how about we all give Piranha 3DD a chance?