Piranha 3DD

Since the campy Piranha 3D made over $80 million (!!!) in the box office, it was inevitable that it would spawn a sequel. It's a difficult task to follow up a stupid hit with an inevitably stupider sequel, but the filmmakers got off on the right foot when they named the sequel Piranha 3DD.  That is simply sublime.  I don't think there is a better way to distill what this movie should be about than that: killer fish and big boobs.  Somebody give that title guy a raise!  Truly, this will live out its days with the royalty of movie sequel titles, like Electric Boogaloo and Die Harder.  Here's the thing, though: I didn't really like Piranha 3D.  Sure, it was campy and had some cheap nudity and gore, but it was too aware of its crappiness to for me to truly enjoy laughing at it.  I hate laughing with bad movies --- I want to laugh at them.  What are the odds that Piranha 3DD will be stupid, but still stupid-fun?

I started off liking Piranha 3DD's choices, right off the bat.  Piranha 3D set the stage for the inevitable sequel, but 3DD opts to completely ignore the ending of that movie; in a brilliant move, they acknowledge that some people died in a lake, thanks to some fish, but it's probably unrelated to what's happening in this film.  So, if you were hoping for some tighter continuity in this series, you're absolutely adorable.  And out of luck.  The story kicks off with Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returning home from college, only to discover that the water park she co-owns with her step-father, Chet (David Koechner), is about to grand open with an all-adult section and a brand new name: "Big Wet."  That's a lot to take in at one time, I know, but try to digest it all.  Yes, a college student co-owns a water park.  Yes, it is creepy that her step-father is setting up a raunchy zone in said water park.  And, following that logic, the lifeguards in the adult section will be strippers.

"And the lifeguards can drop their kids off in the main pool while they're pool stripping!  Genius!"

As the days count down to the grand opening of the park, Maddy and her friends start to notice some strange things happening at the lake that is located near the park.  Luckily, Maddy is a marine biologist and quickly realizes that super-piranhas are entering the lake, somehow.  But that's just the lake.  It couldn't possibly affect the water park, unless it happened to be illegally siphoning water from that lake.

But then...how did...oh, I get it now.

One of the unexpected strengths of Piranha 3D was its surprisingly legit cast.  Piranha 3DD doesn't quite match its prequel in that department.  Danielle Panabaker was fine, I guess, as the character with the closest thing that passes for brains in this movie.I don't know why, but I keep expecting her to have a breakout performance one of these days, despite the fact that she doesn't even stand out in this crap.  Her romantic interests are played by Matt Bush and Chris Zylka; Bush appears to be doing his best impression of a young Seth Green here, while Zylka continues to play teenage jerks.  Both were fine for what their roles called for, but neither was particularly interesting.  Meagan Tandy and Jean-Lu Bilodeau  were only in the film briefly, but they were void of personality.  Paul James Jordan would have been completely forgettable, if not for the scene where he cuts off his penis to keep a piranha from eating him.

I don't know if I would be that calm, sir

David Koechner was his usual bawdy self, and it actually made sense for him to show up in this film.  He wasn't funny, but I kind of hate seeing him in movies, so this matches my opinion of his talents quite well.  I was a little surprised that Ving Rhames reprised his role from the first movie (as did Paul Scheer), but at least his small part had a moderately funny moment. 

...that had already been done in Planet Terror

Gary Busey and Clu Gulager showed up in the introductory scene and were reasonably amusing as idiot rednecks.  Ever since Scream revived the "kill the recognizable actor in the opening scene" film trope, I have enjoyed seeing how different films have embraced the tradition; I'm fairly sure that Clu Gulager is the most obscure horror actor I have seen in a scene like that, but I am definitely not complaining.  It may be nepotism on the part of the director, but it's obscure and fun nepotism.  I will complain about Christopher Lloyd's choice to return, though; for an actor that is as occasionally hilarious as Lloyd, he sure knows how to stoop to the level of whatever movie he's in.  He could have been one of the shining moments of this film, and he definitely was not.  David Hasselhoff was shockingly not terrible playing himself.  I definitely like his work in the Spongebob movie better, but his singing threesome scene was enough to balance out most of his all-too-aware-of-its-campiness part.  When you get right down to it, the only actor I liked in the movie was Katrina Bowden.  Her character was too stupid and sincere for words, but the more I see of her, the more I am impressed by her excellent comedic timing.  Plus, she had the best line in the entire film:

John Gulager directed Piranha 3DD, and it was written by his buddies Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan; the three worked together on all three of the Feast movies.  In case you're unfamiliar with those movies, Melton and Dunstan have also co-written the last four Saw movies, so if anyone knows how to make a stupid movie funny, it's...the guys who write torture porn?  That doesn't sound right.

If only they had this picture to inspire them to greater heights...

I'm not going to bother commenting on normal directorial stuff, like cinematography, editing, or tone, because this movie doesn't care about any of that.  Instead, I'll judge Piranha 3DD on what it obviously values.  It had to be campy, gory, prominently feature large breasts, and, as the sequel to an already unlikely and campy movie, it had to be pretty darn stupid.  If that doesn't sound difficult to you, think of the last movie you watched that was intentionally so-bad-it's-good.  They're rarer beasts than you might think.  So, how did Gulager do?  This movie certainly was campy, but nowhere near as funny as it seemed to think it was. 

Example page from the script: Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle [WAIT FOR APPLAUSE TO DIE DOWN]

Aside from Hasselhoff's narration-singing and bizarre post-credits scene, the only time I laughed was with the whole piranha-in-my-vagina explanation.  That's not a good thing, especially when you consider how many other characters are in this movie.  Instead of being ridiculous, like Piranha 3D, this movie was stupid, and then had the nerve to elbow the audience in the stomach and ask if they "got it."  As for the gore, there definitely was some.  My personal favorite moments included an annoying child's head being eaten, a cow carcass exploding, and (of course) piranhagina (AKA pussanha).

Thank God this didn't start with "This one time, in band camp..."

The rest of the gore was surprisingly tame.  There was a lot of fake blood in the water, but it definitely felt less explicit than the original film, and it sure was a lot less original.  The filmmakers went out of their way to show gratuitous nude shots at the beginning of the film, but I was surprised by how rarely I saw unnecessary nudity as the story wore on.  Wasn't the entire point of making this an "adult" water park to constantly have topless girls splashing in the background of scenes?  It seems like such an obviously exploitative move, and yet it was used so sparingly. 

Why is Botox 'n' Balloon Chest Barbie even in this movie if she's clothed?

How about the plot?  Yes, that was dumb.  I know, I know, the filmmakers had to come up with a way to get piranhas into a water park, and they did it.  I have no problem with whatever stupid justification they needed to get Jason into space piranhas into the water park.  My problem is that the writers felt that they needed to build up to that.  That meant there was less time spent in the novelty location (the water park) and more time spent rehashing the last film in and around a lake.  This is a movie about killer fish in a water park; if I needed a plausible concept, then I wouldn't be watching a movie about killer fish in a water park. 

Correction: a movie about killer fish in a water park that features Gary Busey exploding a cow

When it gets down to brass tacks, Piranha 3DD feels like the poor man's version of Piranha 3D, instead of the bigger and stupider movie that all sequels strive to be.  It wants to be dumb enough to love, that much is clear.  It is just missing the charm, wit, and tongue-in-cheek knowing humor that earned Piranha 3D 3.5 stars (out of 10) from me.  In other words, this movie sucks, even when compared to a movie I didn't like.  The humor is cruder, the tone was more irritating than campy, there were human villains for some reason, and there wasn't enough creative gore or nudity to keep me interested.  It just.  Wasn't.  Fun. 

When 60% of your jokes come from the Hoff, you have a bad script

This isn't just a bad horror movie, it's a bad horror movie when you compare it to bad horror movies.  I almost wish I had given Piranha 3D a better rating, just to illustrate how much worse this sequel is.  How about this: Piranha 3DD made about 10% of Piranha 3D's box office gross.  Ouch.  Comparing it to Piranha 3D isn't even an apples-to-apples argument, because that movie actually achieved its goal of being dumb fun.  This is a lot closer to Shark Night 3D; both movies tried to capitalize on the success of the last Piranha, but couldn't be bothered to be ridiculously over the top.  This was lazy and boring instead of dumb fun. 

"I'll have to scrub for days to get all the shame off me"

On the bright side, this isn't a movie that deserves active hatred, it had a few worthwhile moments, and about fifteen minutes of its runtime was devoted to the end credits/gag reel, so the pain was short-lived.  Let's just hope we don't see another sequel for a while.

Final Destination 5

31 Days of Horror, Day 9

As a fan of the slasher sub-genre, I tend to like creative movie deaths.  If the villain can kill with style and humor, I am 100% on board.  You would think, then, that I would appreciate the Final Destination series, since all they are is a collection of death scenes.  I don't know why, but I've always been bored with this franchise.  Maybe it's the inevitability of death, or maybe it's the hackneyed writing and formulaic plots, but it has been almost a decade since I last saw a movie in this series.  I just never felt like wasting my time, which is especially harsh, considering some of the crap I watch.  I decided to give Final Destination 5 a try for one reason and one reason only:

That's the first major scene in the movie, and it has a lot going for it.  There is a group of friends in a terrible, life-or-death-but-mainly-death situation, and they all manage to find different and creative ways to die.  The CGI looked pretty good and Daivd Koechner has his skin boiled off by hot tar.  What's not to like?  More importantly, what else does FD5 have in store?

Final Destination 5 begins with a group of office workers getting on a bus so they can go to a company retreat.  While on the bridge, Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) has a daydream of the bridge collapsing and everybody but his ex-girlfriend, Molly (Emma Bell), dying in hilarious terrifying fashion.

Off-camera CGI guy: "Rawr!  I'm an evil bridge!  And, um, I'm membering and dismembering your friends!"

When Sam snaps out of it, he sees signs that his daydream is about to become reality.  Naturally, he tries to save everyone's life by demanding that they leave the bus and start running against traffic on the bridge.  Oddly enough, his tactics work; in a bizarre coincidence, all eight characters that have had speaking parts up to this moment miraculously choose to get off the bus right before the bridge starts collapsing, which sends their bus (and non-speaking role co-workers) to the briny depths.  At the memorial service, the survivors decide to be ungrateful little punks and spend their time not enjoying their new lease on life or celebrating; they just want to know how Sam knew to get off the bus, and they want to be sure that their questions all sound accusatory.

"So let me get this straight...none of you wants to buy me a shot for saving your life?"

Of course, Sam could have had a better answer than "suck it."  All he had to do was admit it was a vision, or say something along the lines of "I saw x, y, and z, and overreacted...or so I thought."  Unfortunately for the survivors, it appears that Death has the mentality of a spoiled child and will stop at nothing to kill these survivors in the order they were originally supposed to die.  Which doesn't make a lot of sense, because you would assume Death would be a pretty patient supernatural being, what with all living things having to die.  But without a cranky Death, there is no Final Destination franchise, so...yeah, the villain is Death, and Death loves gory retribution.

And THAT'S  for Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector!

Can this group of plucky youngsters figure out Death's design (TM) and work out a way to survive?  Or will Death kill the hell out of them?  And which ending are you supposed to root for?

Happily Ever After = Death by Fireball

The acting in Final Destination 5 is all pretty terrible.  In defense of the actors, though, it is pretty obvious that this movie is about the kill scenes and not character development. 

What was your first clue?

Taking that into consideration, I would say that David Koechner and aggressive/racist nerd P.J. Byrne were the two most annoying characters.  Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Ellen Wroe, and Arien Escarpeta were vanilla yogurt-bland, with absolutely no unique personality traits.  Miles Fisher wasn't very good, but at least he transitioned believably into a Patrick Bateman-type.

Fisher, fighting the urge to run naked with a chainsaw

So who does that leave us with?  Courtney B. Vance had the unenviable task of being the disbelieving cop.  Tony Todd reprised his role as the Death Whisperer, AKA the guy who explains this goofy-ass plot to the potential victims.  Jacqueline MacInnes Wood probably stood out the most to me, although it had little to do with her fairly sub-standard "selfish bitch" performance.  No, she stood out from the rest of the cast by playing the character with the least amount of common sense. 

Although the best workplace attire

Final Destination 5 is the first full-length feature film to be directed by Steven Quale.  While Quale certainly didn't "wow" in his debut --- little things like character development, subtlety, film style and cinematography were obviously not priorities for him --- there is something to be said about delivering what the audience wants to see.  Even though this is the fifth entry in the series, I would argue that the Quale filmed the quintessential Final Destination scene:

It's all right there.  There is misdirection, false alarms, startle-scares, ridiculous coincidences, and (of course) gory death.  I'll even give Quale some bonus points for making me squirm with the whole screw thing, which probably says something about how desensitized I am to movie violence.  After all, this makes me uncomfortable...

Gosh, that sure would hurt!

...but this is totally rad.

At least she stuck her landing

Anyway, Quale did a fine job constructing the death sequences and didn't seem to care about anything else.  For fans of the series, I think that is an acceptable trade-off.

I am not a fan of this series, though.  There is something inherently anticlimactic when normal humans are trying to beat Death.  It's not like Death ever loses; the time of the game may differ between players, but the outcome is always the same.

With slight variations, of course

These movies are, essentially, fictional snuff films.  That notion disturbs me in films like Saw, but the Final Destination series has always been more about dramatic irony than torture porn.  Instead of getting suspense through traditional storytelling means (How will they get out of this?), FD suspense comes from seeing the deadly pieces come together in an over-complicated mousetrap.

...that sometimes has lasers.  Die, mice, die!

That's the basic idea, at least.  In practice, Final Destination 5 is less about the suspense and more about the gruesome and abrupt payoff.  Would this be a good movie if it had a clever script and/or likable characters occupying the spaces between death scenes?  Probably not, but at least then I might feel bad for someone in the movie other than Tony Todd.

Dude's gonna have his work cut out for him

For what it is, though --- the fifth film in a franchise with a hare-brained premise --- Final Destination 5 isn't too bad.  There is enough dark humor to make the ridiculous death scenes fun to watch, and the death scenes were pretty creative.  The plot is obviously formulaic, but that's what happens when your franchise reaches #5 with a villain that isn't actually a character.  I would recommend this to gore fans, but I've included videos of the only scenes you really need to see.

Here's a little tidbit I laughed at while doing background research on this movie.  Check out this screen capture from the Final Destination series Wikipedia page (as of 10/10/12):

At first glance, the revenue made from Final Destination 5 is jaw-dropping.  $345 million worldwide?  That's insane!  But then I remembered that this was Wikipedia.  Do the math for FD5.  Not only are the percentages of domestic vs. foreign box office obviously wrong, so is the worldwide gross and the all-time box office ranking, as well as the total tallies.  Is it important?  No.  Will I try to get this fixed?  Definitely not.  Anyone who uses Wikipedia as their primary source deserves to get burned once in a while.  Anyway, I thought that was pretty amusing.  If you want to see the actual FD5 numbers, you can go here.