Horror Movie Review: Jurassic Piranha (2016)

Another in a long line of sharksploitation movies, Jurassic Piranha (UK title), also known as Piranha Sharks, is a very difficult movie to enjoy. It sells itself as a horror/action-comedy but struggles to really deliver on any of these descriptions.

Directed by Leigh Scott, who wrote it with Barney Burman and Mark Burman, Jurassic Piranha stars Collin Galyean, Ramona Mallory and Josh Hammond.

This holiday season why not treat your loved one to the latest product on the market? Genetically mutated great white sharks that are the size of piranha. The perfect gift for the whole family, at least until they get into the water supply and start chewing their way through the population of New York city.

How do you stop something so ferocious? Something that procreates at a super-fast speed? A couple of incompetent exterminators might have the answers to save, not just the city, but the whole world.

It’s a familiar tale for sharksploitation watchers. Genetic experiments resulting in a toothy and watery threat. Sharks have been done to death and there have been a fair few piranha films too, so why not combine them? It doesn’t change the basic story and the ‘paint by numbers’ plot developments. You’ve seen it all before and the stuff that it does try to do differently, it does so poorly, it’s not worth noting.

A well written story or well written characters are not what many will be looking for here, truth be told. Most will be looking for some blood and guts and Jurassic Piranha does deliver. Unfortunately, a lot of the time it’s CGI and bad CGI too. There are some interesting ideas; a bathtub death looks good and the strip club bonanza is fun. However, the creatures look awful and their swarm attacks make the film feel even cheaper than it is.

Cheapness can be overlooked though if the film entertains and Jurassic Piranha struggles to entertain… a lot. It takes a while to get going, far too long and seems to want to spend more time focusing on the company who made the piranhas, the exterminators and everyone in between the two. When the piranhas do finally get unleashed, the film then speeds up to such an extent you might think several scenes and sequences were cut, so rushed do things become. Nowhere is that better exemplified then with the finale.

Alongside these issues, the film tries really hard to be funny but it never manages it. Tired jokes, tried character tropes and tired references.

The thing is, even after all of this, Jurassic Piranhas is watchable. Simply because it is so simplistic and unwilling to try. It’s popcorn fodder. Basic popcorn fodder but popcorn fodder none the less.