Stream-Of-Consciousness Review: Piranha 2: The Spawning

Title?: Piranha 2: The Spawning

First or second viewing?: First

Preconceptions:

James Cameron’s first film. I am not a Cameron fan. Terminator was fun, sure, but in my (admittedly minority) opinion, Aliens was as much a step down from Scott’s original as Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II was from Carpenter’s original. Having said that, I’m dying to see how he tackles the subject of amphibious, winged piranhas.

Program Start:

An homage to the opening of Jaws 2. With boobies! Well played, Cameron. Carnivorous coitus interruptus. Underwater no one can hear you scream.

Opening credits: camera crawls over the wreck of a sunken ship. Precursor, of course, to Titanic. And that IMAX movie.

Lance Henrickson’s in this!

Looks like someone really overdid the soft focus; looks like it was shot through a cheesecloth.

Resort hotel in the Caribbean. A mother and son live out a vaguely Oedipal dynamic within; she works there as a diving instructor.

It’s an Italian production; I recognize all the voice actors from every other Italian exploitation film.

In the hotel bar: Jewish stereotypes–Italian style!

Hypersexual older lady hitting on all the younger men. She reminds me of the infected old woman in Cronenberg’s Shivers.

Young Oedipus goes out an a crewing excursion with a rich asshole. Alexandre Aja took a few plot points from this one for his remake, I see. The asshole seems to be an American ivy league stereotype, but he’s got a hot Italian daughter.

There is so far no indication of even a younger, rawer Cameron in this film. The comic relief scenes feel like they were directed by Stephen King.

Expositional dialogue about the spawning of the grunion–and humans’ intrusion on their ritual–provides ironic foreshadowing: humans have come upstream to “spawn,” only to be consumed by fish. It’s not unclever, I’ll give it that.

More boobies!

Lance Henrickson is a crotchety cop, who happens to be the diving instructor’s estranged husband (precursor to the leads’ relationship in The Abyss), and Oedipus’s father. Be careful, Lance.

Mom is hit on by one of her students. You be careful too, dude.

Victim’s facial flesh eaten away, except for what’s behind the scuba mask. Great idea, fun effect.

Okay, so some scenes are a little better than others. Maybe the second unit director sucked. Maybe somebody got fired and replaced. Have to investigate later.

Some pretty strong female characters: another Cameron trait (his most positive, in my opinion).

The first time we see a piranha fly, it emerges from a victim’s torso cavity in a manner more than slightly reminiscent of a certain film he would later helm the sequel to.

The mom succumbs to her suitor’s advances; ominous music carries us out of this scene into one where naked bimbos get viciously eaten. As if her having sex with this guy brought it on somehow. The fish are a manifestation of Young Oedipus’ latent jealousy, I’m telling you. Aliens is also fraught with mother issues. Was Cameron raised by a single mom, like Tarantino?

The hotel manager is the Mayor Vaughn stand-in, refusing to close the beaches.

The mom’s suitor is playing her! He’s a mole for the bio-weapon firm that made the piranhas; precursor to the Burke character in Aliens. 

Every time the piranhas attack, it hits me all over again: this is a movie about flying piranhas.

Interesting score. Sounds like Michael Nyman sometimes.

A guy staggers out of the water, half eaten, and is dragged back in by the fish. Pretty strong scene.

Tourists gather at the spawning ground to participate in a silly ritual intended to summon the grunions. Their mockery of nature is dutifully punished.

Oh yeah–this movie’s about flying piranhas!

The mom and the bio-weapons guy rig the piranhas’ nest with dynamite. Funny: I just attended a 35mm screening of Alligator last night–another Jaws ripoff featuring dynamite in the climax. I choose to recognize this as Jungian synchronicity.

The fish eat the bioweapons guy. Was it Nature’s vengeance, or the latent jealousy of Young Oedipus?

Mom grabs the anchor of Henrickson’s speeding boat to escape the explosion. Pretty nifty trick, actually. She gets to be an action hero in the end.

Afterthoughts:

Found out that indeed, there were at least two directors who worked on the film, and Cameron had very little control. He was not, however, the child of a single mom.

I initially wanted to write that, due to my incredibly low expectations, Piranha 2 turned out to be not half bad. But in fact, the opposite is true: It’s exactly half bad.