A Year of Garbage Movies #74: Piranha 3DD (2012)

Piranha 3DD is a ground-breaking, avant garde parable for the commoditization and cynical sexualization of modern cinema.

The film delivers its message on a multitude of levels, swapping seamlessly between the literal and the meta-fictional narratives with each segment of dialogue.

An example:

A trite conversation between two would-be lovers over one’s insecurity at the size of her friend’s breasts acts as a feint, lulling the viewer into a false sense of complacency with a dose of B-movie camp. This has the effect of sharpening the impact of the next cut: due to a mishap involving handcuffs in The Mystery Machine, the aforementioned well-endowed friend and her partner are devoured mid-coitus by a pack of carnivorous fish in a beautifully crafted metaphor for the disintegration of the nuclear family in modern America. The subtle eroticism of the scene (The van penetrates the lake as it sinks. Also people are having sex on screen) creates a state of unconscious dissonance in the viewer’s psyche, wherein their lizard brain relishes the gore and nudity on-screen while their super-ego is greatly disturbed. Likely, they will dream of Leave it to Beaver episodes the following night and never quite know why.

Not content to limit itself to an exploration of post-World War II family dynamics, Piranha 3DD is also a transgressive form of Biblical allegory.

In one scene, one of the female leads (not coincidentally, the same lead who…