Monster-Movie Mayhem: ‘Mega Piranha’ Review
Stars: Paul Logan, Tiffany, Barry Williams, David Labiosa | Written and Directed by Eric Forsberg
So the official synopsis for Mega Piranha reads like this:
Join Special Agent Finch (Paul Logan) and Professor Sarah Monroe (80’s pop star Tiffany) as a mutant strain of giant ferocious piranha escape from the Amazon and eat their way toward Florida… Will the entire population of Florida be saved from complete annihilation? Featuring explosive set pieces, stunning special effects and the most fearsome marine monsters in the history of film, Mega Piranha is the riotously entertaining new creature feature from the makers of last year’s massive DVD success, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus. Battleships will be destroyed, humanity will be threatened, a continent will reach the edge of disaster, a group of heroes will risk it all to save innocent lives and helicopters will be eaten. Prepare for the ultimate bite-sized blockbusting thrill-ride that will leave you desperately hanging onto the edge of your seat.
Erm… so what film where they watching? Seriously.
Mega Piranha starts as it means to go on, with plenty of [CGI] blood and boobs, opening as it does with a pre-credits piranha feeding frenzy and post credits topless boat ride on the Orinoco River. But the piranha of these opening scenes arent of the Mega variety so enter Marine biologist Tiffany to tell us that the piranha are doubling in size every 36 hours! Its never 100% clear why, only that they were part of an experiment to make the wildlife more robust for feeding purposes!?
The film wastes no time introducing characters and locales, instead it goes for video game style visuals, with text overlays and NCIS-style black and white camera snapshots. This video game look is carried into the godawful CGI too think the very early days of PS2 and youll be somewhere near. Even for an Asylum production the CGI is bad, theres one particular scene that features see-through(!) CGI piranha tales sticking out of the water as they attack an unwilling victim Although thats not the worst part of that scene, that would be the shocked scientist on the river bank who they keep cutting back to and replaying the same footage over and over!
About half way though the movie theres a rather weird, yet somehow totally expected, homage to Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea that is about 5 years too late, as one of the scientists explains the piranha situation with his back to the river big mistake! You never turn your back on a Mega Piranha! Then theres the reference(s) to Piranha 2 James Cameron would be proud.
Those homages are just a small part of the random moments that occur throughout the film characters will speak Spanish and then switch to English part way through a sentence, and the subtitles match, switching from English to Spanish. Whether this was for comedy effect is unknown, but if it was they pretty much failed on all counts. Then theres odd scientific mumbo jumbo apparently, according to Mega Piranha, if you suck on a mobile phone battery the acid in your saliva will give you an extra 10% charge. Is this true? I have no idea. But its the weirdest scene Ive ever witnessed in a movie even in this movie!
Now I hope youre sitting down for this, as this may shock you, but Mega Piranha is like Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, in that is has multiple endings three to be precise, thats an average of one every thirty minutes, LITERALLY. The film is pure insanity, even for one of The Asylums movies. There are scenes that scream spoof, then scenes that scream serious tonally its all over the place. At least Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus seemed to be having fun with the concept, Mega Piranha is way too stoic for what should be a camp film and as so it fails to generate as much FUN as its predecessor heres hoping The Asylums Tiffany vs. Debbie Gibson flick Mega Python vs. Gatoroid can succeed where this film failed. Although you have to give props to any movie that features someone getting shot with a flare gun, in the mouth, and his head exploding!
Oh, and whilst we dont get a rendition of Tiffany’s I Think Were Alone Now during the film, she does sing the closing theme tune Frozen Skies!
